LGBTIQ+ and Traditions Sipping Coffee

A snowy landscape by night
Timimies poems are filled with desperation, anger and emancipation. They're fueled by the pressure of standing on a vanishing landscape. | Photo (detail): © Ville-Riiko Fofonoff

Poet Timimie Märak is Sámi and a gender queer lesbian. In their poem, Timimie processes the different facets of their identity.

What we want
To be acknowledged as a people treated as an equal

What they do
They cut our hair and our forests
They say they are doing it for us
Always ignoring the chorus crying out facts and feelings

Let's face it we are dealing with the rootless

The old ways become paved ways
 Love is seen as the strange way still treated as an illness

Let's face it we are dealing with the ruthless

They are breeding us to be kneeling feeding greed leading everyone to thinking healing is hiding behind face masks and productivity
The ones without future can afford to be truthless
 Let's face it we are dealing with a useless
system. It is working with them
 but because of us.
 
Digging coal drilling oil missing daybreak
Blood money paycheck

Here the poem in North Sámi

Maid mii háliidit 
Dohkkehuvvot olmmožin geat meannuduvvojit ovttadássásažžan 
 
Maid sii dahket 
Sii čuhppet vuovttaid ja min vuvddiid 
Sii dadjet sii dahket dan min dihte 
Álo badjelgehččet joavkku mii čuorvu duohtavuođaid ja dovdđuid 
 
Dovddastednot ahte lea sáhka mášuhemiid birra 
 
Boares geainnut asfalterejuvvojit 
Ráhkisvuođain gehččet ipmašiin ja ain gieđahallet dávdan 
 
Dovddastednot ahte lea sáhka goavvi olbmuid birra 
 
Sii bággejit min čippostallat, biebmat daid vuovdnáid geat midjiide buohkaide sárdnidit ahte buorádus lea ámadaju hámaid duohken ja buvttadanmunis 
Sis geain ii leat boahtteáige, sáhttet leat duohtavuođa haga 
Dovddastednot ahte lea sáhka dohkkemeahttun  
vuogádaga birra. Dat bargá sin ovddas 
muhto min geažil. 
 
Bohkat koallaoljju, das ii leat iđitguovssu 
Varraruđat bálkálihppun 

 
 

About this editorial

This article was contributed as part of the interdisciplinary, cross-border project The Right To Be Cold*, which focuses on the ecology and sustainable living conditions of the Arctic and Boreal regions. Voices from different perspectives are heard on issues dealing with climate change and subsequent, dramatic changes in northern living conditions. The Right To Be Cold negotiates questions of indigenous rights, ecology, climate justice and culture.

* The title of the project comes from the long battle of Inuit to have their rights linked to climate change. The book of the same name by Sheila Watt-Cloutier (2015, Allen Lane Publication), testifies of her pioneering work in connecting climate change to human rights. Okalik Eegeesiak, Former Chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) used the expression in her discourse at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change COP 21 December 3, 2015 in Paris, France.