Eskimeaux
May 17, 2016 8:28 AM   Subscribe

Eskimeaux is a music project started in 2009, led by Gabriel Smith, co-founder of The Epoch, a brooklyn-based community of creators.

Her album Year of the Rabbit is an achingly beautiful E.P. The Pop Matters review of YOTR states "...I could write pages about all the small things Smith has slipped into her lyrics ". Smith goes into some of the lyric details in a recent Fader Interview.

She provides into some of the details of how The Epoch works and discusses her previous album OK with Wakemag in a 2015 interview.

The Epoch covering the controversy from last year surrounding the name Eskimeaux and whether or not the name constitutes appropriation.
posted by Annika Cicada (10 comments total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
Gabrielle is amazing. Her Tiny Desk concert in particular is one of the most winsome things I've heard in a long time.
posted by Cash4Lead at 8:58 AM on May 17, 2016 [2 favorites]


I got to see them about a month ago here in Atlanta with Frankie Cosmos!

Really good show!
posted by LizBoBiz at 9:06 AM on May 17, 2016 [3 favorites]


Was there really controversy over their name outside of a vocal contingent of kids on tumblr calling them out for it? I just remember a bunch of 14-year-olds going wild over the name and then Eskimeaux posting a reply.
posted by gucci mane at 9:44 AM on May 17, 2016


I also remember Elvis Depressedly and Sam Ray having a great laugh about it but I don't think I can dig up those posts.
posted by gucci mane at 9:47 AM on May 17, 2016


I have to admit I raised an eyebrow just now, because my friends who are Inuit don't like the term Eskimo, but they are Canadian and I gather the preferred terms are different between the US and Canada. However, since the artist is claiming her own actual indigenous heritage, I don't think that could be considered appropriation.
posted by joannemerriam at 9:49 AM on May 17, 2016


Also, they were juuuuuuuust on tour with Frankie Cosmos
posted by gucci mane at 9:51 AM on May 17, 2016


There was enough of a thanks over her name that it's been addressed multiple times in multiple places so as to what defcon level it rose to I have no idea.
posted by Annika Cicada at 10:53 AM on May 17, 2016


From the “controversy” link she says:
“I was adopted. The only information I have about my birth family or blood line is that my birth father is Tlingit eskimo. The Tlingit tribe in Alaska considers the designation “eskimo” to be inoffensive and neutral, even preferable to imprecise terns like Inuit (the Tlingit are not Inuit). I chose this moniker as a teenager, in a time when I felt like I had been denied an identity - my Tlingit heritage was the only thing I could hold onto about my cultural history that was real. As a person who had very limited information about where I came from, this was a very powerful idea. The name Eskimeaux is in no way appropriative – I do not seek to utilize or contrive an anglo-fied or whitewashed version of the Tlingit culture. I don’t mystify the Tlingit culture in my imagination. The name is personal to me and I don’t condone non-eskimo people using the term ignorantly.”

This is bullshit. Tlingits are never referred to as “Eskimo” and not for the “is this term offensive or not” reasons. Wrong region, wrong language & cultural group. The groups (waaay up north from Tlingit territory) who historically would be called Eskimo are the Inupiaq, Yup’ik, etc.

It’s totally fine if she wants to feel a connection to her Tlingit heritage and actually learn about it, but the adoption of this name and her clueless defense of it is pathetic. I’ll give her a bit of a pass because she came up with it as a teenager (the phase where we try to stand out and define our personal identity), but it’s still wrong.

And then there’s the part with a false appeal-to-authority about what the “Tlingit tribe” (who?) supposedly think about it. Mega eye-roll here.

I see the Wikipedia page says “. . . her father is of Tlingit Eskimo descent.” This is bad because using the term “Tlingit Eskimo” on Wiki makes it seem to people who don’t know any better that it is a legitimate descriptor. Should be edited to just “Tlingit”; I won’t do it as a made a decision years ago to never get involved with Wikipedia.
posted by D.C. at 11:57 AM on May 17, 2016 [3 favorites]


O.K. is one of my favourite albums of 2015. So good.
posted by Theta States at 1:14 PM on May 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


"You coward, you hummingbird" is one of my favorite (slant?) rhymes of all time.
posted by quadrilaterals at 2:47 PM on May 17, 2016 [4 favorites]


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