Beatrice Deer announced her eighth studio album today, setting an April 3 release date for Inuit Legend and sharing a new track called The Bear. The Montreal-based Inuk and Mohawk singer-songwriter recorded the album with Mark “Bucky” Wheaton of Land of Talk and Christopher McCarron from Stars, the same team behind her 2018 Canadian Folk Music Award-winning record My All to You.
The Bear follows an elderly woman who killed a polar bear with a walking stick and mittens during the early 1900s famine, bringing meat back to save her family. The song arrives as the album’s third advance track, following Arranged, a duet with Inuk singer Johnny “Yaa” Saunders about arranged marriages in Inuit communities through the 1960s. Deer sings primarily in Inuktitut across the 11-track record, shifting between English and French while incorporating throat singing into indie-rock, dream-pop, and folk arrangements.
Listen below:
The album pulls from Inuit oral tradition and family stories passed down through generations in Deer’s native Nunavik region. Songs like Caterpillar and Aukkauti transform tragic myths and violent historical accounts into what Deer calls a manifesto about survival and feminine power. The project addresses intergenerational trauma in Inuit communities while documenting legends that predate colonial contact.
Deer, who grew up in the small village of Quaqtaq before relocating to Montreal, has spent two decades developing what she terms “Inuindie,” a style that fuses northern folk traditions with contemporary indie rock. She won the 2023 Indigenous Music Award for Inuit Artist of the Year and scored the animated short Angakusajaujuq: The Shaman’s Apprentice, which screened at TIFF and made the Oscar shortlist.
Inuit Legend arrives at a moment when Indigenous artists are claiming space in Canadian independent music without softening their cultural specificity. Deer’s decision to centre Inuktitut language and traditional narratives while working with established Montreal indie producers marks a clear continuation of that trajectory.
Photo credit – Alexi Hobbs
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