Westin Sutherland, an 18 year old Ojibway Sailor Moon fan from Winnipeg, has been working on creating a fan dubbed version of Sailor Moon in Anishinaabemowin, one of the many Indigenous languages which is spoken in Canada. A news story on the CBC web site covering this has been getting a lot of attention this week. Westin shared a clip of the first episode on Facebook a few weeks ago. This includes Luna telling Usagi that she is Sailor Moon and her first transformation sequence. You can watch it embedded below.

Westin Sutherland, who is from the Peguis First Nation, decided to dub Sailor Moon and other cartoons because he loved the sound of Anishinaabemowin and felt that his people didn’t have a lot of programming and books in their language. He’s also working on dubbing The Proud Family and other shows. There doesn’t seem to be any particular web site where these episodes are to be shared. The clips in question have only been posted on Westin Sutherland’s private Facebook account. I’ll be keeping an eye out to see if a full episodes shows up somewhere.

You might notice that the sample clip is a mirror image of what was seen in the original episode. This was likely an attempt to avoid having the video flagged for copyright violation.

What do you think of the clip? Can any First Nation Canadian readers understand the dialogue?

This coming weekend Winnipeg Sailor Moon fans will get a chance to meet the voice of Sailor Moon herself, Terri Hawkes! She will be appearing as a guest at Ai-kon from July 17th to the 19th in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Terri Hawkes was the second voice of Sailor Moon, but likely the most recognisable to many fans of the original English dub having provided the voice of Sailor Moon for most of the first two seasons.

Terri Hawkes recently co-authored Performing Motherhood: Artistic, Activist, and Everyday Enactments. Her contribution is the chapter “The Triple Threat” which deals with gender issues in theatre.

This weekend, March 1st and 2nd, there will be a huge gathering of Sailor Moon voice actors at the Wonderland Anime Festival in Winnipeg. The convention will be playing host to Linda Ballantyne, the voice of Sailor Moon, Kate Griffin, the voice of Sailor Mars, Susan Roman, the voice of Sailor Jupiter, Toby Proctor, the voice of Tuxedo Mask, Ron Rubin, the voice of Artemis, and John Stocker, voice director for the series. The convention will be taking place at the Victoria Inn Hotel, near the airport.

The convention will be holding individual panels for each voice actor on the main stage throughout the weekend. Saturday will feature Linda Ballantyne at 11am, Toby Proctor at 1pm, Susan Roman at 2pm and Katie Griffin at 3pm. Sunday continues with John Stocker at 1pm and Ron Rubin at 2pm. In addition to these guests the Wonderland Video Room will be screening episodes of Sailor Moon throughout the weekend.

Tickets are still available for $35 for the weekend or $20 for a single day.