The annual festival provides artists opportunities to learn from each other through a series of over 40 formal skill-building workshops as well as more informal collaborations. In past years, these workshops have included seminars on caribou and moose hair tufting, stained glass and glass blowing, blacksmithing, stone and wood carving, traditional beadworking designs like peyote triangles and ghost beads, as well as tips and tricks for working with sealskin,hide, fish scales and more.

The festival also features a strong performance art stream, showcasing traditional and contemporary music, dance and storytelling with live performances from acts like A Tribe Called Red, the Selkirk Spirit Dancers, Mathew Nuqingaq, the Inuvik Drummers and Dancers and Twin Flames, alongside screenings of Indigenous short films.

The experiential atmosphere offers a “truly immersive stage for artists to create,” says Johnson, as well as a place “for audiences to learn from and gain fresh perspectives on Indigenous peoples, their arts and cultures.”

Although the 2021 iteration of the festival was postponed due to pandemic restrictions, the 2022 festival will bring together more than 200 Indigenous artists for eight days of programming between June 29 and July 5, 2020, including visual artists, performers, filmmakers, fashion designers and knowledge keepers from across the circumpolar North and beyond in conjunction with the Arctic Arts Summit. “We will celebrate Canadian northern region communities that both express uniqueness and share commonalities in their art, language, landscape, environment, history and culture,” says Johnson. 

The festival is currently accepting applications for artists interested in participating.