“I studied this in film history class,” reflected someone in the crowd before throat singer Tanya Tagaq took the stage at Toronto’s Luminato Festival to perform in front of a background projection of Nanook of the North.

But not like this.

Tagaq’s presentation of the historic documentary highlighted the colonialist tendencies of the night’s muse, vocally juxtaposing deep, triumphant, and aggressive growls and chanting “Colonizer, colonizer, colonizer” to images of Inuk people being infantilized onscreen and pictured examining relics of their colonizers’ “progress” with wonder and confusion. It was hardly committed to honouring the “aesthetically significant” stamp Robert J Flaherty’s editorial dramatization has typically been decorated with.