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Songs of Sila: Avianja Rakel Sanimuinaq, Ikimaliq Pikilak & Nuka Alice

Three Kalaallit Inuit women sit with Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo, who met them while filming on their traditional land in Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland). Ikimaliq Pikilak carries the revival of Inuit tattooing, Nuka Alice carries drum dance, and Avianja Rakel Sanimuinaq carries her family's lineage of healing. Together they speak about what colonization severed, what gratitude makes survivable in the Arctic, and Sila, the word that holds weather, breath, and the consciousness connecting all living things. Recorded in June 2025 during the launch week of The Eternal Song, this conversation arrives now to celebrate Sila, the new film from Science and Nonduality featuring all three women, streaming at theeternalsong.org/sila.

Guests

Ikimaliq Pikilak is a Kalaallit tattoo practitioner. Trained in the Western tattoo industry in Denmark, she returned to Greenland and, through the traditionally tattooed mummies of Qilakitsoq, began an eleven-year journey of reclaiming Inuit women's markings: their meanings, their protocols, and their place in healing. 

Nuka Alice Lund is a drum dancer and teacher from the west coast of Kalaallit Nunaat. Taught by Paulina, who gathered songs from the elders of East Greenland, she works to normalize the use of Inuit drum dance and its songs, teaching adults and carrying the stories, intentions, and patience the practice asks for.

Avianja Rakel Sanimuinaq is a healer working within her family's ancestral lineage. Her practice spans soul retrieval, putting souls to rest, and the older responsibility of rebalancing relations between people, land, and the spirit world. Of mixed Inuk and Danish parentage, she speaks in the conversation about finding her roots through her ancestors and helping others use her roots to find their own. 

Timestamps

  • 00:00 — Introduction: The Eternal Song, the new film Sila, and the July 28–29 live gathering
  • 00:05 — Ikimaliq: the mummies, the gap in memory, and the return of Inuit tattooing
  • 00:07 — What the markings mean: confession, womanhood, gratitude, kinship
  • 00:13 — Nuka Alice: unlearning the colonial narrative, finding the drum at 19
  • 00:19 — Sila: weather, consciousness, the universe we have in common
  • 00:22 — Aviaja: a family of shamans and the responsibility of the angakkoq
  • 00:29 — Trailer: Sila, streaming now at theeternalsong.org/sila
  • 00:31 — Soul sickness, mind sickness, and the body as self-healing land
  • 00:42 — Drum battles: conflict resolution, truth-telling, and lifelong bonds
  • 00:49 — "Start looking in the mirror": finding your own ancestral roots
  • 00:55 — Eyes as pathway to the soul; growing up between Inuk and Danish worlds
  • 01:02 — Loneliness, homesickness of the soul, and dandelion root medicine

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