Whisp • 30 • he/they
˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜
There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy.
˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜
Star Wars Blog: @astheforcewhillsit
As a young boy in school, Masaki Sashima would be dragged out of his classroom and beaten by his fellow students.
Masaki, now 72, was different to the other kids.
He was Ainu, an Indigenous people from the country’s northern regions, most notably the large island of Hokkaido.
“During recess, the hallway door would open, and several guys would yell at me to come out,” he said.
“I clung to my desk in the classroom and kept quiet.
"Everyone would surround me and beat me.”
Japan has long portrayed itself as culturally and ethnically homogenous, something that some have even argued is a key to its success as a nation.
More than 98 per cent of Japanese people are descendants of the Yamato people.
But the Ainu are distinct, with their own history, languages, and culture.
But, as the victims of colonialism, assimilation, and discrimination, much of that identity has been lost.
An Ainu woman named Chiri Yukie wrote down some of her people’s oral traditions into Japanese because, as a child, her people were being displaced by Japanese settlers in Hokkaido. Her language was disappearing, so she (ironically) saw translating the stories into Japanese as a way to preserve them. She died at age 19.
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
Some of the objects from the Ainu exhibition at Japan House in London this year, showcasing traditional Ainu skills and culture. There is a campaign to get Ainu recognised as an official language, at least in Hokkaido, and small steps are happening, for example, bilingual bus stops. It reminds me of the struggle for Welsh to be revived after suppression for centuries.
second image ID: the cover of The Song The Owl God Sang: The collected Ainu legends of Chiri Yukie, Translated into English by Benjamin Peterson. end ID
Also, this is a good short ~25 minute documentary that shows Ainu people fighting to recover their ancestral bones and bodies from Hokkaido University that’s worth a watch.
strongly encourage everyone who has access to it to check out Ainu activist and politician Kayano Shigeru’s Our Land Was a Forest: An Ainu Memoir — you can get a preview with the first chapter here, and it is findable Elsewhere online.
Today is “Portfolio Day” across many socials, so I could easily post my usual: “I’m Eshpur, a freelance artist who loves stained glass, monsters and medieval things. I specialize in illustration, cover art and TTRPG projects…”
But today, I want to do something different (finally!)
I realized I don’t have many spaces where I can share the lore of my personal work - the notes on my characters and the stories I’m writing. So… I think Tumblr is the perfect place for that, and here we are!
I hope you enjoy my art, and I’ll get back to you soon with more notes about what’s been happening in my mind for years haha
(I’m actually very nervous about making this post because I have absolutely no idea how everything works here 😭)
ive always rly liked the idea of a member of a group of adventurers having what everyone assumes is very well trained hawk and then at the end of their journey its casually revealed that thats actually just his buddy whos a shapeshifter and just rly likes being a hawk
the guy also like thinks everyone knows bc he never tries to hide the fact that the hawk is a person but everyone assumes hes always just joking. like the others being like “damn its crazy how he knows exactly what you want him to do its like he knows english or something.” and the guy is just like “well yeah thats his first language so ofc he’s fluent??” and they all go “haha good one” and move on, leaving him confused
they just think hes a quirky guy that really loves his pet and says things like “the 9 of us” even tho there are clearly only 8 people! he just cares about the bird so much he counts it as a group member haha !
i went on a mini-excursion to stockholm today, and in particular
they have an exhibition of the work of britta marakatt-labba, a sámi textile artist. i strongly recommend going if you can get to stockholm before november when it closes. it’s worth going just for historja, a 24 metre long embroidered tapestry that’s been compared to the bayeaux tapestry.
it took her four years to complete. the right half shows some excerpts of sámi history and the left half shows mythological scenes that blend in the middle.
in addition, they have a selection of her smaller pieces, like garjját (the crows), a representation of the time norway sent their entire police force to remove a sámi encampment trying the prevent the construction of a dam.
“Kitchen Cabinet”: Your grandma’s old cracked casserole dish. The bumpy linoleum tiles under your feet when you hear the stove click on. The things you love seem to glow with a special, yellow light.
I have written a poem about the current situation.
Not just ICE, but all of it. Months ago, a thinkpiece referred to the dissipation of Trans rights as the ‘canary in the coal mine’ for American Fascism. And then again, and again, and again… another issue, another issue, another issue.
The canary and the coal miner share a special kinship: they’re both trapped in the mine.
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
