There is a new version of Star Wars, or A New Hope, as the kids call it, but this one isn't a "Greedo shot first" situation. The classic film has been dubbed into Ojibwe. Last year, the Dakota Ojibway Tribal Council and the University of Manitoba partnered with Disney/Lucasfilm to create an official Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe) version of Star Wars: A New Hope. Ojibwe is spoken in Eastern and Southern Canada and its border states. A casting call produced a slate of dedicated native speakers to translate and dub the dialogue.
"The word for hyperdrive in English has two parts, the hyper which is super, super crazy. And then there's the drive part. So we, we basically just broke it down the same way," said Aandeg Muldrew, a translator on the project and the voice of Luke Skywalker.
Bringing those words to life was a different challenge for the voice actors. Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher are silver screen icons with very distinctive interpretations of the characters.
Theresa Eischen, the voice actor for Princess Leia, said she took her lead from the Hollywood stars.
"I recorded each line that Princess Leia said, as Carrie Fisher said them," said Eischen. "And then I would automatically say them in English first to get the sound, the way she sounded. Then I would say them in Anishinaabemowin. And it just came together after that."
This is not the first indigenous language dub of A New Hope. A Navajo dub was added as an extra to Disney+ in 2021, but it has never been seen in theaters. The Ojibwe dub premieres on August 8 at the Centennial Concert Hall in Winnipeg, Manitoba. A limited release to additional area theaters will follow. The trailer is available here.
Previously: The AVENGERS cast has dubbed the film in the Lakota language
