It's a value system Susan Aglukark has adhered to since childhood: 'Live by what we need and not by what we think we need.'

 Sounds simple enough, until the demands of a fast-rising music career -- not to mention a move to a larger urban centre -- come calling on the Inuit singer-songwriter, who'll perform tomorrow night at Centrepointe Theatre backing her latest disc, Unsung Heroes.

 Still, Aglukark stands by her beliefs.

 "My Christian upbringing combined with the culture I grew up in taught me that we don't need a great deal and greed is a bad thing," Aglukark says, referring to her Inuk life in what is now the territory of Nunavut. "When I moved to Toronto, I found myself overwhelmed by the tall buildings, the four-lane highways, all these vehicles constantly going. These people always seemed to have some place where they have to be."

 Materialistic

 Such a fast-paced, materialistic livelihood spurned Aglukark into writing a song for new album, The Ghost of Cain.

 "On my way to the studio I began to think about why we do what we do. Why don't we just what we need?" ponders Aglukark. "And it reminded me of the whole story of Cain and Abel and where the whole greed thing began. It just struck me that it's been a problem not just in our time, it goes way back to the Bible days. It got to a point where people -- even one's own siblings -- killed out of greed."

 Born in Churchill, Man., Aglukark spent her childhood moving throughout the Keewatin region of the Northwest Territories, eventually settling with her family in Arviat, NWT, a small community on the Hudson Bay. She would later find work as a linguist for Indian & Northern Affairs in Ottawa in the early 1990s. Her earliest recording appeared on a CBC radio compilation of Eastern Arctic artists; her first video, for Searching, won a MuchMusic Award for outstanding cinematography. But when her 1995 disc This Child and its first single O Siem reached the airwaves, Aglukark's music career began a fast-track to stardom.

 Honeymoon over

 Incidentally, her childhood community last year became part of Nunavut, which returns the governing of the land to its native residents.

 "It's a great accomplishment," Aglukark says. "But speaking as a just a regular person, there's still a lot of work to do. And I think people realize that now more than they did a year ago.

 "The honeymoon period is passed, and people are now at a point where they're asking, 'What now? Where are all these promised changes?' They don't happen overnight. Now the work begins for us for maintain what we had said we would like to see accomplished in Nunavut, and take it a step further."

 Is there anything Aglukark, known for helping out for a cause such as the International Stop Racism Concert a month ago, might suggest for improvements to Nunavut?

 She pauses, then replies: "I could come up with a million different ideas as to how I'd think things could be done. But I have chosen not to get involved in the politics of it all."