Singer-songwriter Elisapie won the 2024 Juno Award for Contemporary Indigenous Artist or Group of the Year for her album Inuktitut (2023). The win was announced at the Juno Opening Night Awards, an industry event that happened before the Junos broadcast on March 24, 2024 from the Scotiabank Centre Arena in Halifax, NS. 

While accepting the award, Elisapie thanked her fellow nominees, friends, family and colleagues and dedicated the album to her family in Salluit, Nunavik, QC, including her uncles, who formed the band Sugluk, an Inuit rock and roll band active through the 1970s and ’80s. “They pretty much formed me and made me who I am,” she said. 

Elisapie’s winning album Inuktitut, her fourth studio album, features 10 Inuktitut versions of popular classic rock and pop songs from the likes of Led Zeppelin, Blondie and Fleetwood Mac. Imbued with nostalgia and emotion, each track is inspired by a person or memory from the artist’s life. “During the pandemic, I started listening to old hits when I went jogging, and I often came home with tears in my eyes,” Elisapie told Elle Canada. “Certain songs brought back really pointed memories and started taking on special meaning for me.” When the album was released in September 2023, it debuted at number one on the iTunes’ Canadian chart. 

Originally from Salluit, Elisapie is based in Montreal, QC, and has been performing since 1998, first in the band Taima, which won the 2005 Juno Award for Aboriginal Recording of the Year, and later as a solo artist. She has earned a number of nominations over the years for her work, including a Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Original Song in 2014 and making the shortlist for the Polaris Music Prize in 2019. Elisapie is also a filmmaker; her award-winning documentary If the Weather Permits (2003) looks at the Inuit lifestyle changes in Kangirsujuaq, Nunavik, QC, as the generational divide between the young and the old widens. 

Elisapie was the sole Inuk nominee for Contemporary Indigenous Artist or Group of the Year; other nominees in the category included Aysanabee, Blue Moon Marquee, Shawnee Kish and Zoon. In addition to her win, Elisapie was also nominated for Album Artwork of the Year for Inuktitut’s cover art.