Our collaboration started with the question “what if Tenyidie was written in Tamil script instead of English?”. Tenyidie, an originally oral language, was first inscribed into a modified Roman script in 1884, and its formally indigenized form is now in daily use. Our work as part of this open studio is the starting of a longer research project considering a speculative history where Tenyidie and Tamil speakers met, and together developed a more collaboratively oriented script for Tenyidie, notating its sounds as well as its variations in pitch with nuance and faithfulness. How do these seemingly distant claims to indigeneity come to sing together?