Elisapie

Elisapie is an impressive musician, filmmaker and writer from Salluit, Nunavik, QC. Based out of Montreal, QC she has been performing as a musician since 1998, first in the band Taima and then as a solo artist. Elisapie's  first solo album There Will Be Stars (2009) was an ode to the North and lead to a 150-date North American tour. Isaac mixes English, French and Inuktitut into her work. Recently, Elisapie was a 2019 Polaris Music Prize shortlist artist for her album The Ballad of the Runaway Girl (2019).

Along with her band, Taima, Elisapie won the Juno Award for Aboriginal Recording of the Year in 2005.  Additionally, she has worked on the soundtracks as a writer, singer and composer for many films and television shows and was nominated by the Canadian Screen Award for Best Original Song for her song “Far Away” from the film The Legend of Sarila (2013) as well as the Eval-Manigat prize from the SPACQ Foundation, in the Multicultural Song category in 2012. Elisapie won the Ambassador Prize at the 2011 Teweikan Awards for her activism, film and music work throughout Canada, and in 2019 her album Ballad of the Runaway Girl was nominated for a Juno award and shortlisted for the Polaris Prize. In 2024, her fourth studio album, Inuktitut (2023), featuring ten covers from rock and pop icons, won the Juno Award for Contemporary Indigenous Artist of the Year.

An accomplished filmmaker as well as a musician, Elisapie released her documentary If the Weather Permits in 2003 with the support of the National Film Board, which looked at the changes in lifestyle of Inuit in Nunavik, QC. If the Weather Permits received many awards such as the Claude Jutra Award for Best New Director at the Rendez-vous du Cinéma Québécois and the Rigoberta Menchu Prize at the First People’s Festival.