Northern style

Award-winning TV series North of North by Inuit filmmakers Stacey Aglok MacDonald (Qanurli, The Grizzlies) and Alethea Arnaquq-Baril (Angry Inuk, The Grizzlies) made a return to the small screen last week on APTN, CBC Gem and CBC TV with its second season première.

North of North is partnering with the Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq to celebrate the way it has propelled authentic northern fashion into the global spotlight at the gallery’s special edition of Crafted on the Catwalk tonight, featuring fashion and design from Manitoba, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, Nunatsiavut and Nunavik.

Arnaquq-Baril and series stars Anna Lambe and Zorga Qaunaq spoke to the Free Press ahead of tonight’s catwalk show.

Free Press: The fashion in Season 1 set the bar so high. We’re barely into Season 2 and have already seen so many covetable, stunning looks. What story do the clothes tell the viewers?

Alethea Arnaquq-Baril: it was incredibly important to us to showcase the fashion of the North because it’s something we’re just so proud of. It’s real, and there are so many incredible creators in the Arctic. When you live in a place where well-made clothing keeps you alive, it becomes culturally important. And so we’ve got millennia of just the most fabulous outerwear on the planet … and we love colour. That’s something that we never got to see onscreen. Most stuff about the Arctic portrayed it as this blue, grey, desolate place.

FP: How much of the actors’ personalities are reflected in their respective characters?

Zorga Qaunaq: When I first read Millie, I thought how cool she was, how colourful and stylish she was. She’s an artist like me, but she’s just so much bigger than I am. I’m so lucky I got to play her. I think I’m more like her now than I’ve ever been.

AAB: She’s become more like you.

ZQ: Yeah, oh, we’ve become like each other.

Anna Lambe: Going into Season 1, Siaja and I were so different. Siaja is quite impulsive, clumsy, very messy. She’s very expressive, she’s very extroverted, she loves connecting with people. But I was very thoughtful before I do anything, to the point of overthinking. A lot of those were mechanisms I had in place as safety nets of presenting perfection and the expectations that I had of myself. And so through Siaja, I’ve gotten to be so much more expressive and so much freer as a person. Being able to experience those emotions through her has been so cathartic, and so I, as Anna, have become much more impulsive, much more expressive. I realized I love people. I am a chatty Cathy.

FP: The friendship between Siaja and Millie is so recognizable. In the first season, they seemed distant, and we see that change considerably. Were they deliberately written that way or was it something that evolved through the filming process?

AAB: I’ve always loved that your childhood best friends … you can grow apart and then something clicks later in life where you find each other again, and it’s like no time has passed. Nobody can know you quite like someone who was your best friend as a kid who saw you be the dorkiest version of yourself, the bullied version of yourself, the anxiety-filled version of yourself. They’ve seen you go through all the versions of yourself and know you in a way that no one else can. There’s also something so beautiful about friendships that have always been there and can survive and rebuild and repair after years apart.

FP: There is so much humour in the show — but within all of that are some quite painful truths delivered alongside the laughter, especially by Anna’s character, who seems pretty unafraid of telling it how it is.

AAB: It’s all the things I wish Stacey and I said to the people when we were in our 20s trying to organize for a community back then. I wasn’t that brave at that young age; it took me years. I did eventually get there to confront the people in charge, and to want to take over, and to see doing for ourselves. So we wrote a character that’s doing a lot of what we wanted to do back then, what we did eventually do. It does get messy and uncomfortable, but she deserves a shot at doing it. We wanted to put that out there to show other young Inuit, if you’re in that position, go for it, because when you don’t have someone telling you to go for it, it can be terrifying.

AL: So many of our women in the community, Inuit women, can often be so forward and honest. It can just be matter-of-fact and honest, and sometimes that hurts your feelings when there’s no cushioning around it … We grow up with so much of it, just as straightforwardness that isn’t meant to hurt you. It’s just meant to make you see the big picture or to give you guidance.

ZQ: … when we do get a painful piece of feedback, we know that’s coming from a place of love. So it’s so nice to see that onscreen, being able to professionally and confidently give criticism and feedback or ways to improve things without worrying about power dynamics.

FP: Another example of not shying away from the truth comes courtesy of scenes with Elisapee, an elder and a residential school survivor who is the community centre’s deeply Christian receptionist.

AAB: Elders are so respected in our communities, and as a younger person, you’re supposed to always be respectful to them; it can be really hard to push back. It’s also very real that we have a lot of Christianization in our communities due to colonization and the missionaries that came and forcibly put a lot of new rules on our communities. I found a lot of the most hurtful, frustrating and demoralizing things that I’ve experienced have come from deeply Christian elders. The more evangelical, the more critical. And so we wanted to put that in the show because it’s a reality that young folks experience … It’s our way of pushing back at those things to elders that we couldn’t push back to in real life — to poke fun at it a little bit, but also to show, even when they’re being hurtful, sometimes they carry a lot of love and wisdom.

AL: It’s been a character that I find really funny and very entertaining and also very frustrating, but it’s been a really important part of my understanding of how to navigate respecting elders while also knowing that life is different now for us too, and we need to be able to balance these thoughts, feelings, and improvements.

FP: Life lessons from a show that has been impacting your own personal life and understanding of the world around you. Alethea, did you expect this to happen when you read this? What was your hope?

AAB: I’m not going to lie, it was the thought. We have fun, celebrate the beautiful things about our community, but also process for ourselves as individuals all the various influences in our lives and process our own ambitions, failures, and place in the world. We do it in a way that is hopefully making others feel a little less alone in their journeys.

This interview has been condensed for clarity and space.

Crafted on the Catwalk begins at 6:30 p.m. with a champagne reception. The Living Lookbook pre-show at 7 p.m. features models and artists wearing jewelry and other accessories that will be available for purchase at the North of North Market on Wednesday and Crafted: Show + Sale, Nov. 6-8.

The runway show begins at 8 p.m., hosted by Michelle Chubb. The post-runway reception includes a meet-and-greet with some of the cast from North of North.

av.kitching@winnipegfreepress.com