The lanky green-pink lights danced wildly across the horizon, pulsating like an incandescent curtain in the breeze.

I thought it was the closest I had been to God since the birth of my children. I cried.

My experience was far from unique. Each year tens of thousands of people flock to Arctic and sub-Arctic destinations seeking that near-religious connection with the aurora borealis, spending about $1.5 billion while doing it.

Canada’s Northwest Territories are a key destination, along with Finland, Norway, Greenland and Iceland.

But Indigenous people in the Far North have been living under the lights for centuries. They have their own lore about the aurora, experiencing it as part of life’s canvas, rather than a once-in-a-lifetime event.

It’s that relationship with the aurora that’s told in “Kiuryaq,” a new play that emerged from a four-year collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists from Canada, Greenland and the Sápmi region in Norway.

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