Translated from the English to the Nagamese by Dolly Kikon
Moikhan toh guti sopona laga rushi te nisena,
Sopona beshi maiki laga.
Kunba guti beya hoishe, kunba toh jaijai shea,
Holibi rushi takot ase.
Aro itu ki rushi ase?
Satha didi bhuini laga sopona.
Dylan Coleman is a Kokatha (Gugatha) Aboriginal / Greek woman from the far west coast of South Australia. She is a Lecturer in Yaitya Purruna Indigenous Health Unit, Faculty of Health Sciences, at the University of Adelaide. In 2011, Dylan completed her doctorate at the University of Adelaide's English Department. It explores Indigenous narrative process and its capacity to recreate stories of trauma and loss into ones of survival and liberation. In 2011, the creative component of Dylan's PhD,
Mazin Grace, won the Arts Queensland David Unaipon Award for Unpublished Indigenous Manuscript, as part of the Queensland Premiers Literary Awards. In 2012 Mazin Grace was published and in 2013 was longlisted for the Stella Prize, and shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize.
Dolly Kikon is a lecturer at the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne, Victoria. Her research focuses on the political economy of extractive resources, development initiatives, gender relations, customary law, and human rights in Northeast India. Before coming to the University of Melbourne, Kikon led an interdisciplinary research project titled ‘The Indian Underbelly: Marginalization, Migration, and State Intervention in the Periphery’ at the Department of Anthropology, Stockholm University. Her work focused on the increasing trend of outmigration among upland societies in Northeast India and examined the expansion and outcomes of developmental activities by the Indian state in areas associated with economic ‘backwardness’, subsistence agriculture, and armed conflict. Prior to obtaining her doctoral degree in Anthropology from Stanford University, Kikon worked as a human rights lawyer and a community organiser in India. Focusing on land rights among tribal communities in Northeast India, her legal advocacy works extensively dealt with constitutional provisions with regard to land and resource ownership, as well as autonomy arrangements for securing ethnic rights and guarantees.