Recently, the Star Wars universe has expanded to include multigenerational Anishinaabe speakers to bring a new Ojibwe dubbing of Disney's Star Wars (Anangon Miigaading): A New Hope to life. The film is directed by Ellyn Stern Epcar and partners in the project include Dakota Ojibway Tribal Council (DOTC), the University of Manitoba (UM), Disney/Lucasfilm and APTN as a part of wider efforts to revitalize the language.
Niigaanii-Animikii Inini is a filmmaker and the language-culture coordinator of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in northern Wisconsin. He's also the voice actor for the character Red Leader in Star Wars.
Inini has been a Star Wars fan since he was a child when he saw the Special Edition re-release in theaters in the '90s, so when he came across a social media post advertising auditions he had to try out.
"After I applied I was invited to audition and to choose from several main characters to audition for. So I chose a handful and the process was I had to record on my own computer, reading lines in Ojibwe per character. And I was using my best intonations akin to what I was seeing in the original Star Wars and then listening to the elders in my head to try and pronounce the Ojibwe the best I could," describes Inini.
After sending in those tapes he heard back from the Disney crew asking for Inini to audition for one of the particular characters over Zoom with the director. After that audition he was promised a role in Star Wars, but didn't know which character for some time. "I'm so proud to be giving voice to Red Leader, acted on screen by the late Drewe Henley," he says.
Inini's voice of Red Leader was translated by Patricia Ningwewance, a first language speaker and teacher who led a team of translators before the auditions, according to Inini. "So when I was auditioning I was given lines — and not just given lines on paper, but also a recording of an elder pronouncing the lines to give some enunciation guidelines there as well," he adds.
Inini notes that Ojibwe tends to have a flatness to its tone and there isn't as much accenting sounds as with English words. When he inquired if the Disney team preferred a flat, traditional Ojibwe pronunciation or emulating the original English actor's performance, he was invited to aim for the English actor's.
"I watched the original scene over and over and over and over again. I did some background research [on the character] ... So, I brought that information with me into the sound studio and the director also invited certain emotions, certain loudness, guiding me in the studio as well," says Inini.
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https://www.wuwm.com/2024-09-24/an-incr ... -in-ojibwe
