Tanya Tagaq, a Canadian throat singer, won the country's coveted Polaris Prize for her third studio album Animisim, beating out the likes of Arcade Fire, Drake and Mac DeMarco.
The award, which is given out every year for the country's best album, pitted Tagaq's release against notable records like Arcade Fire's Reflektor, Drake's Nothing Was The Same and Mac DeMarco's Salad Days, among others. The throat singer, a native to Nunavut, is an animal rights activist, often standing up for the abuse against seals by her native people.
"People should wear and eat seal as much as possible," she said during her acceptance speech, Rolling Stone points out. "An indigenous culture is thriving and surviving on a renewable resource: wearing and eating seal. It's delicious, and there's lots of them, and f*ck PETA."
Tagaq took advantage of her time at the podium because, according to Vice, the Canadian public isn't the most open to hearing native issues. "A lot of my music career has been protest music without words, because it's very difficult to discuss these issues in Canada, because you bring up native rights and people just roll their eyes and put on their party pow wow headdress or whatever," she told Vice after posting a picture of her baby next to a dead seal in protest. "It's really difficult to get through the clouded mentality."
The throat singer first caught the public's eye in 2000 when she joined Björk on tour. She's also worked with Faith No More's Mike Patton and Canadian rapper Buck 65.
