Inupiaq rapper AKU-MATU inhabits many forms when onstage. In some songs she raps as a polar bear; in others, a caribou or a whale. In one rap, she embodies “an ancestor from the future.”

Offstage, she’s Allison Akootchook Warden, an environmental activist who employs song, dance, theatre, performance art and social media to spread her message of caring for land and tradition, while stretching notions of what it means to be Inuit beyond stereotypes about igloos and dogsleds.

Warden, whose whimsically-costumed alter-egos are a fixture on the Anchorage arts scene, is an unapologetic advocate of weirdness, but not for its own sake.

“I do a lot of ‘out-there’ things, but I am still Inuit. The funny thing about our