This Inuk throat singer and her mom are keeping their culture alive on TikTok

CTV National News: A cultural lesson Shina Novalinga is using TikTok to show her cultural pride and is using her fame both for charity and to release a throat-singing album.

TORONTO — Inuk throat singer Shina Novalinga is using TikTok to show her cultural pride and is using her fame both for charity and to release a throat-singing album later this year.

“You sing from your throat and from your heart,” she told CTVNews.ca in a video interview. “We imitate the sound of nature, the sound of animals and we really connect with our spiritality with our voice and the vibration that we’re creating.”

While the 22-year-old Montreal college student spends most of her time studying business management, it’s her side hustle on TikTok where she’s become more well known.

In her videos, which have racked up millions of views on the platform, she films herself and her mother performing traditional throat singing duets, which involve two women standing face-to-face as they grunt and take deep breaths to sing in a harmonious rhythm.

It’s part-collaboration-part-competition to see who can outlast the other. But for Novalinga, who’s been throat singing since childhood, doing it over TikTok has become a way to bond with her mother, Caroline.

“It’s something that we’ve been practising for such a long time,” Novalinga said. “It was always natural to me.”

She’s also used her platform to share parts of her life, including showing her mother traditionally braid her hair or her sporting her mother’s custom-made parkas with fur-lined hoods. In Indigenous culture, all parts of the animal are honoured and used.

Novalinga posted her first TikTok last March, during the height of the pandemic, and originally began posting just for fun. But after she began showcasing her culture and performing throat-singing twists on covers to popular songs, her following exploded to 1.3 million strong.

Novalinga said she was initially nervous posting her first throat-singing video because she was unsure how people would react. “But now, I think everyone is starting to appreciate throat singing.”

Half of the TikTok’s 800 million active users are under the age of 34 and primarily use the app to perform song covers and dances to trending tunes. And through “Native TikTok,” a subculture on the platform, Indigenous creators from across Canada and the U.S. have been collaborating and sharing their stories, perspectives and culture with Indigenous and non-Indigenous people alike.

Novalinga said she’s used her platform to connect with other Indigenous creators. Her latest collaborator is hoop dancer James Jones, more popularly known as Notorious Cree to his 2.4 million followers online.

“We have this beautiful community that comes together and supports one another and we’re learning so much from each other,” she said. “It’s just beautiful to learn… and have that support and I feel it’s really needed.”

She’s also used her platform to donate to charity. Earlier this month she helped raise nearly $12,500 to create individual care packages filled with mittens, hand sanitizer, feminine hygiene products and other essentials for Indigenous women living at a local shelter in Quebec.

“We think about our people and think of ways to help our community, ways to support each other and since we just grew this platform very recently, we thought ‘why don’t we use it for a good cause?’” she said. “It’s an important part of our values.”

While the throat-singing practice -- whose name varies depending on region in Canada -- is unique to Inuit people, overtone singing or throat singing is also performed by the Tuvan people in Russia and Tibetans.

But the practice has a sordid history history in Canada with Christian missionaries banning throat singing for the Inuit people centuries ago, according to The Canadian Encyclopedia. The skill of throat singing is relatively rare, but it’s had a resurgence beyond Indigenous circles since the 1980s thanks to Canadian Inuk singer Tanya Tagaq and TikTokers like Novalinga.

“For us to take that back and to embrace that and teach the world about the Inuit culture, it just means so much more to me because we’re preserving [it],” she said. “It helps me connect with my mom and my family, my ancestors and my grandmother.”

In 2014, the Quebec government recognized katajjaniq or Nunavik throat singing as its first cultural item to be given the intangible cultural heritage designation.

Later this year, Novalinga is looking forward to taking her craft to an even larger audience by releasing a throat-singing album with her mother.

“It’s one of the few throat-singing albums out there, especially Inuit throat singing,” she said. “We almost lost that part of our culture so for us to throat sing and record it… it’s just very beautiful. We’re very excited.”