Checklist for Inevitable Sámi Diaspora Misunderstanding or How Sámi Do Not Have a Word for Artificial Snow
- Say that you can hear the heartbeat of a reindeer
inside the earth. - Say you are something they’ve never heard of
(at least up to 15 kHz, that is). - Give advice about decolonization. And you mean
them and yourself, and how you can hardly walk
atop muskeg now. - Talk too much, explain too much, unsay so much,
with your highly vascularized tongue and talk story
until the herd comes home. - Tie your tongue in knots of shame when you speak
in your children’s ancestral language and you don’t
know how to speak in yours. - Remain suspect, pawing through artificial snow,
when you try to explain on Twitter who the Sámi are.
Use the few words of Northern Sámi you know.
Brace for attack. Enrage a user. Block him. - Mention cultural awakening and then be accused
of wheeze snorting. - Translate your life history through their eyes
when it’s impossible because your eyes turn blue
in winter and brown in summer. - Scratch yourself open so you can prove you bleed snow
like lake water mixed with snow on top of ice. - Reach up and yank your hollow hairs out every time
you are misunderstood.
