The Jerry Cans’ music is a happy marriage of distinct musical cultures: folk-rock from below the Arctic Circle and traditional throat singing from above. So it’s not entirely surprising that the Nunavut-based quintet is also the product of an intercultural marriage, in this case between songwriter and vocalist Andrew Morrison and throat singer and accordion player Nancy Mike.

He’s of European descent, she’s Inuit, and together they’re making music that’s a powerful, even joyous, riposte to media reports that life in the North is nothing but unmitigated despair.

“Succinctly, I would say that all of the songs are very much about life in Nunavut, whether they’re happy songs or celebration songs or whether they’re more tragic, sad songs,” Morrison explains by phone, reached with Mike during an Ottawa tour stop. “We try to cover all the bases and complicate what people might think of the North—share some of the positive and a bit of the negative as well.”

More than half of the songs on the band’s second album, Aakuluk, are sung in Inuktitut and presented without translation. That won’t keep those who don’t speak the language from enjoying the Jerry Cans’ energy—in that regard, they’ve been compared to the Pogues and the Clash—but Mike notes that some of the songs are humorous, while others carry a more serious message.

“One of them is talking about PETA, the organization, and how it doesn’t understand the Inuit and seal hunting—how we use sealskin and how we eat seal and things like that,” she says. “That’s one of the most powerful songs for me, as an Inuk—as someone who eats and uses seal. That’s a big, big part of my family and our way of life.”

“Qanuinngittuq”, on the other hand, is Morrison’s self-deprecating tale of how he came to learn Inuktitut. “It didn’t start off as some big political journey,” he explains. “It was just me trying to impress Nancy’s in-laws.”

“When I met Andrew, he didn’t speak Inuktitut very well,” Mike notes. “But he really wanted to speak with my grandfather and my dad because they only spoke Inuktitut. Music was his way of learning, but it’s also our way, together, to preserve the language.”

Another of their goals, Morrison continues, is to preserve a worldview that is undeniably threatened by the new languages, bureaucracies, religions, and material goods that have entered the North during the past century. Maintaining the language, he says, is the key to Inuit survival.

“When we started to sing in Inuktitut, there was an overwhelming outpouring of support,” he says. “People were so happy to see young people wanting to do this and encouraging others, and now we’re one piece in a stronger movement of lots of young people making this very, very concentrated effort to sing in Inuktitut. It’s very cool to see the impact of a few little words on a page, or a few little songs here and there.

“We’re very happy about the direction we’ve been going,” Morrison adds, “but there’s always more work to be done!”

The Jerry Cans play the Vancouver Folk Music Festival’s Stage 5 on Sunday (July 19).