Cover Design

In my research, non-Indigenous people were typically shown as active (seen reading, cycling, playing video games, watching a movie, etc.), complex, and technologically advanced, while photos of Indigenous people have often portrayed them as passive, simple, faced away from the viewer, and wearing traditional clothing (i.e. conveying they are connected to and/or “of the past”). Because of this, I decided the main image should portray a Sami person head-on, in motion, or performing an action. In response to the common use of outdated, overly simple visuals that only focus on their history, I wanted to acknowledge the full, present-day existence of groups like the Sami people by going for a bold and modern look on the cover.

The end result was made using stills of Sami singer Sara Marielle Gaup Beaska as she yoiks, a form of song unique to the Sami people. Yoik is mentioned several times throughout Antiphony as an activity that the Sami people are prohibited from performing by the dominant outside culture beginning to penetrate their ways of life. As readers get further into Laila Stien’s story, this action becomes clear to them either as a yoik or as a representation of the three Sami women who speak with the narrator in Antiphony.