Iron Maiden’s settler indigenising: Karen Fournier, ‘Asserting the Missing Indigenous Voice in “Run to the Hills”: Iron Maiden (1982); Tanya Tagaq and Damian Abraham (2018)’, in Mike Alleyne, Lori Burns (eds), The Routledge Handbook to the Popular Music Cover Song, Routledge, 2026 | settler colonial studies blog

Iron Maiden’s settler indigenising: Karen Fournier, ‘Asserting the Missing Indigenous Voice in “Run to the Hills”: Iron Maiden (1982); Tanya Tagaq and Damian Abraham (2018)’, in Mike Alleyne, Lori Burns (eds), The Routledge Handbook to the Popular Music Cover Song, Routledge, 2026

12Jun26

Abstract: Iron Maiden’s “Run to the Hills” (1982) tells a story about the history of genocide that is often erased from settler histories about westward expansion and, because of its frank depiction of settler violence against Indigenous communities, the song has been cited as an influence by Indigenous bands like Testify and Testament and by solo artists like Tanya Tagaq. Despite its enormous popularity among fans, critics of the song point to a central paradox: while the song’s lyrics seem to empathize with the plight of the Indigenous communities to which it alludes, every character in the song, including a fictional Cree man who vanishes from the narrative after the introduction, is performed by a settler vocalist (the band’s lead singer, Bruce Dickinson). This contradiction is reflected in the song’s video, which portrays settlers as hapless fools, but which also features white actors in redface whose performances merely reinforce racist stereotypes of the wily or bloodthirsty “Indian.” In 2018, Inuk singer Tanya Tagaq teamed up with punk vocalist Damian Abraham to rework the song in a way that would allow each musician to provide a different perspective on the story. In terms of vocal timbre, Tagaq’s vocal practice depicts what Kateryna Barnes (2021) calls the sounds of Sila, or Mother Earth, while Abraham’s growling gut voice represents what David Pearson (2019) describes as the “(in)humane” sounds of industry. With these sonic contrasts, and a reworking of the song that retains the Indigenous voice throughout, I will argue that the 2018 cover of “Run to the Hills” presents its listener not only with a story about the genocide of Indigenous peoples, but also with an apocalyptic warning about the killing of Sila by settler industrialization.

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