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Tanya Tagaq Shuts Down 'Sealfie' Cyberbully With Police Help

Inuit Singer Tanya Tagaq Stops 'Sealfie' Cyberbully With Police Help
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After facing a backlash from posting a "sealfie" earlier this year, Inuit singer Tanya Tagaq says she has been feeling better of late thanks to authorities helping her out in battling one particular foe online.

In an interview with the CBC Tagaq revealed that last week police in Brandon, Manitoba assisted in shutting down the Twitter account of one of her harassers, one of some who have contacted Tagaq almost daily through Twitter.

There's no word if charges were laid against the person responsible. A June 4 Facebook post provided a bit more information adding the Brandon Police worked along with Twitter in shutting down "the main offender who was hurling abuse over the #Sealfie movement."

"It's like my body was covered in boils and now all the boils are gone," Tagaq said. "That's what it feels like. I woke up and I was healed or something. Just to show that man that it's not okay to abuse people, no matter what your standpoint is.

Tagaq, who posted a photo of her infant daughter near a dead seal earlier in the year, said some people were posting Photoshopped images showing her daughter being skinned online. The tweets and photos were obviously deeply upsetting and troubling for Tagaq who tweeted the following in early May:

"I know I'm a good mother so to have a person like that talk about having my kids taken away every day for a couple of months...the first while was alright because I have a pretty thick skin but by the end I didn't feel sorry for him anymore, I just needed him to stop," Tagaq said.

"It does raise a lot of flags for me when it comes to my own children. When someone is attacking you on that level, you have to be very, very sure of yourself and very confident and those aren't things that a lot of children possess."

Tagaq also discussed the seal hunt, expressing her support for it as a means of sustenance. "Well you can love something and survive on them at the same time," she told CBC's Q with Jian Ghomeshi. "Like I'll take a fly and put it outside my door. Hunting is not evil, like a wolf is not evil when it hunts a caribou. Big corporations digging oil out and flying up tofu, that's pretty evil."

Tagaq -- who released her latest album "Animism" earlier this year -- dazzled all earlier this week with a stellar performance at Toronto's Luminato Tuesday evening. Tagaq and a trio of supporting musicians provided the soundscape for the 1922 documentary "Nanook Of The North."

The musician has a handful of Canadian dates this summer but is also working with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet on a new work entitled A Story of Truth and Reconciliation. According to Global News, the piece is inspired by the stories heard during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Canadian Seal Hunt

#Sealfies Promoting The Seal Hunt

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