#sofriel

Frontier (2016) created by Brad Peyton, Rob Blackie & Peter Blackie

1. Is she a main character? YES.

2. Does this character fall in love with a white man? YES.

3. Does this character end up raped or murdered at any point during the story? NO / NO

Sokanon from Frontier does not pass The Aila Test

you do the best cow poems :)

The Cherokee Word For Water (2013) dir.  Tim Kelly & Charlie Soap

1. Is she a main character? YES.

2. Does this character fall in love with a white man? NO.

3. Does this character end up raped or murdered at any point during the story? NO / NO

Wilma Mankiller from The Cherokee Word For Water passes The Aila Test 

To everyone who’s submitted so far - @sofriel and @pohutukaryl - thank you so much for the contributions! Keep them coming, guys, as our submission page is very much open and all the submissions about POC and faceclaims of color in period dramas are truly appreciated <3

It’s hard to choose, but some of my favourite poets are Nuala Ní Dhómhnaill, Gaebpien Gåsta and Somhairle MacGill-Eathain.

Nuala Ní Dhómhnaill is an Irish poet who I got into at university. Her ‘An Mhurúch san Ospidéal’ (the Mermaid in the Hospital) is a brilliant poem, and the entire suite - The Fifty Minute Mermaid - about a mermaid who moves on to land, and thus has to deal with the trauma of losing both herself, the sea and her culture whilst establishing herself as a ‘human on land’ is both beautiful and tragic. 

The poems deal, on the surface, with the psychoanalysis of a mermaid, but are in reality a discussion about sexual abuse at the hand of the Catholic church on the one hand, and the loss of language and what it does to a nation on the other. Great and depressing stuff at the same time.

Gaebpien Gåsta was a South Saami poet who inspired me to write poems in my mother’s language. His combination of traditional yoiks, written down as poems, as well as his harsh critique of colonialism, long before anyone was using ‘decolonisation’ as a trendy buzzword, is unparralleled, and despite the multitude of other Saami poets out there, such as Áillohaš and Paulus Utsi, or more contemporary ones, such as Niillas Holmberg, Rose-Marie Huuva, Simon Marainen and Stina Inga, I still think that Gaebpien Gåsta (Gustav Kappfjell) is the best one out there. I don’t know if it’s because he writes his poems in the northernmost dialect of South Saami, i.e. my own dialect, or if it’s because of something else, but I still love his poetry.

Here’s a recording of him yoiking his poem Gaavalohke, set to music by Martin Bergquist, whose aajja (grandfather) was a cousin of Gaebpien Gåsta.

Somhairle MacGill-Eathain, where do I even start.