As a nurse and a drag artist, Anita LandBack blazes a trail in the name of Indigenous resilience

Anita Landback is just one of the many extraordinary subjects featured in the fourth season of Canada's a Drag, a docu-series from CBC Arts that shines a light on some of this country's drag heroes.

By day, Anita LandBack has worked as a nurse practitioner, primarily in emergency departments, for nearly a decade. By night, however, their drag has captivated hearts across the city we've come to call Halifax (or Kjipuktuk, as it has been known in Anita's ancestral language of Mi'kmaw since long before colonizers arrived).

When Anita decided to start doing drag, they wanted to think of a name that "was very unapologetically Indigenous." 

"'Anita LandBack' is this love letter that I have made for who I am as a Mi'kmaw, who I am as a two-spirit person and who I am on a day-to-day basis," they say. "Whether or not I'm in scrubs or I'm in heels, Anita is an experience."

For those of us who have not been lucky enough to witness the Anita LandBack experience in person, we now have the next best thing: Anita is the focus of a new episode of Canada's a Drag. And we could not be more enchanted by everything they have to offer us.

Anita is dedicated to amplifying Indigenous representation and engaging audiences in meaningful dialogues, all while celebrating their Mi'kmaw heritage. They describe their journey as "a testament to breaking norms, championing inclusivity and the importance of embracing every facet of identity."

"It's really important to feel seen in every space," they say, "because, if for one instance you feel invisible in that space, the next time, you're going to think about that experience. And for a lot of racialized communities, those experiences are anywhere and everywhere."

Anita says they see examples of this all the time in their work as a nurse.

"You have people avoiding emergency departments when they need them," they say. "In my home community, you have people a dime a dozen saying, 'I can't go to the hospital. This is how they treated me the last time,' or, 'this is how they treated my mom.' Everything I do has always been trying to make care safe for Indigenous people, but I feel like it's an injustice to not think about other people, too, that don't feel safe in these spaces. I've always tried to make it a point to be visible, to try everything I can to make either people's voices be uplifted or [their] thoughts and intent be seen."

Anita's episode of Canada's a Drag speaks to the importance of recognizing Indigenous languages, particularly when LandBack performs to the song Skicinuwihkuk by Jeremy Dutcher.

"I stand and live and my whole life is in Mi'kma'ki," they say. "I reside here in Kjipuktuk, which is Halifax. Mi'kma'ki is the ancestral territory of my people, the Mi'kmaq. And so, that covers Nova Scotia, P.E.I., parts of Newfoundland and a little bit of New Brunswick, too … I try to use language as much as I can just to have recognition that that's what their names were this whole time. So I picked the song Skicinuwihkuk by Jeremy Dutcher, which means 'native land.'"

Dutcher and LandBack will notably join forces at the 2024 Juno Awards, where the former is a nominee as well as one of the evening's performers, while the latter has been announced as a presenter. The awards this year are, of course, taking place in Kjipuktuk.

Follow Anita Landback on Instagram and watch all of our released episodes of Canada's a Drag on the CBC Arts YouTube channel.