Beatrice Deer: “The Storm”
Beatrice Deer self-describes her genre as “Indie-pop-rock-traditional Inuit throat singing.” She began to sing for audiences at 15, and released her debut album Just Bea in 2005, which she won a Canadian Aboriginal Music Award for Best Inuit/Cultural Album. In 2010, she released her self-titled album Beatrice Deer (Album), and later that year she released a Christmas album, An Arctic Christmas. Her song, Fox, inspired the children’s book The Fox Wife, published in both Inuktitut and English in 2018 by InHabit Media. She sings in the three languages she speaks: Inuktitut, English, and French. Her music is intense, beautiful, and complex, featuring electro-synth indie rock undertones mixed with raspy vocals.
Originally from the small, four-hundred person village of Quaqtaq, Canada, Beatrice identifies as Inuit. Her father is Mohawk and her mother is Québécoise. She moved to Montreal after graduating high school at sixteen in order to go back to school and pursue music. She now has kids and is a program officer at Aumaaggivik, the Nunavik Arts Secretariat. There, she supports artists with funding and projects to get them more exposure and become more professional in their work. She also is a spokesperson for suicide awareness and generational trauma related to colonization in the Nunavik community.
Beatrice feels a deep cultural connection to the North, the Cold, and the Inuit value system based on family, respect, and generosity. In an interview with Arctic in Context, she explained that the Inuit are very helpful and generous; that they share everything. “Elders taught us in school that during the famine, if they caught one ptarmigan (a small bird of the grouse family, roughly a size of a pigeon), the whole clan would have a bite. They didn’t just selfishly eat it in their igloo.”
Her music journey began back in Quaqtaq. Her husband at the time payed guitar, and moving to Montreal made sense for pursuing her music. Aforementioned, she has been singing since age 15, but started taking her music more seriously in 2005, when she got financial assistance to record her debut album, Just Bea. Now she performs at festivals, Inuit related events, Christmas parties, and cultural presentations.
Her most recent album, Shifting (2021), features The Storm, which embodies Beatrice’s style of raspy vocals and Inuit indie rock. Translated into English, the lyrics read
[Intro]
My life felt like a storm
I couldn”t see anything in front of me
[Verse 1]
As I look around in the storm, I see
A light far away
I go towards it with nothing stopping me
My path was dark but it”s brightening up
[Chorus]
The light I see
In the dark I follow
I see my path
I see my purpose
[Chorus]
The light I see
In the dark I follow
I see my path
I see my purpose
highlighting Beatrice’s journey from Quaqtaq to Montreal, and her journey as an indigenous woman through the storm. The verse “as I look around in the storm, I see a light far away/ I go towards it with nothing stopping me, My path was dark but it’s brightening up” places emphasis on her work with suicide prevention. I was particularly drawn to the cinematic elements of the music video, because it opens with a the indigenous dancer Keenan Simik Komaksiutiksak playing the prominent Weatherman Kameron Arnatuk. He begins by reporting the weather, then slowly beginning to dance. I was struck by the camera’s ability to capture the subversion of corporate into art.
References:
Arteau, Jean François. “Beatrice Deer: Inuit Artist and Activist from Quaqtaq.” Arctic in Context, 30 July 2021, jsis.washington.edu/aic/2016/09/21/beatrice-deer-inuit-artist-and-activist-from-quaqtaq/.
“Deer, Beatrice.” Inuit Literatures ᐃᓄᐃᑦ ᐊᓪᓚᒍᓯᖏᑦ Littératures Inuites, inuit.uqam.ca/index.php/en/person/deer-beatrice. Accessed 31 Jan. 2024.
“Beatrice Deer – the Storm (English Version).” Genius, genius.com/Beatrice-deer-the-storm-english-version-lyrics. Accessed 31 Jan. 2024.
“Beatrice Deer Hometown, Biography.” Last.Fm, www.last.fm/music/beatrice+deer/+wiki. Accessed 31 Jan. 2024.