Knowing a coastal Sámi landscape in Finnmark: transmission and regeneration of knowledge and identity across three generations (original) (raw)
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The Northern Review, 2017
Depopula on is a growing concern in core Sami areas in Norway, and the loss of produc ve young people is a par cular concern for rural regions. Yet new industrial developments are debated due to the impact on tradi onal iden tydeveloping prac ces such as reindeer herding. The objec ve of this ar cle is to gain knowledge about how Sami youth iden ty shape their decisions to stay or return to their home place and how they envision their opportuni es for employment. This qualita ve study inves gated how Sami youth experience Sami iden ty as a determinant of educa onal, occupa onal, and housing preferences. Data was collected through interviews with fourteen Sami youth from three diff erent types of Sami communi es in Norway-Guovdageaidnu (Kautokeino), located in the core Sami area in Inner Finnmark, with a strong reindeer based economy and Sami as the fi rst language; Má a-Várjjat (Sør-Varanger) and Porsáŋgu (Porsanger) in coastal Finnmark; and the southern Sami areas based around Snåase (Snåsa) in North Trøndelag. The informants from the three communi es were university and college students, high school pupils, and appren ces. The study's theore cal framework and analysis is inspired by the theories and applica ons of the life mode perspec ve, combined with perspec ves of cultural iden ty, locale, landscape, and global "sense of place." The fi ndings suggests that life modes that signify or enable salient Sami values infl uence how Sami youth refl ect on their Sami iden ty and envision opportuni es. Furthermore, the fi ndings show that diff erent life modes infl uence Sami youth iden ty development through providing opportuni es for new expressions of a Sami iden ty.
Rethinking research in South Sámi communities
2019
In this article, we address methodological issues of conducting research in South Sámi communities. These communities belong to indigenous areas of the Norwegian and Swedish territory state and have been less explored in research. South Sámi people mostly live as a minority group in their communities. They may represent an alternative societal perspective and mobilize on other grounds than Norwegians in these settings. It is consequently necessary to be cautious when carrying out this research. In this article, we discuss a previous research project ‘South Sámi and welfare services’ (Hedlund & Moe, 2000; 2010) that we conducted from a methodological point of view. The aim is to discuss how rethinking the methodology of this research project and similar projects, allows different types of knowledge and insight to be gained. In this article we discuss how an institutional ethnographic methodology may allow researchers to elaborate systematic knowledge on how South Sámi, as social subj...
Ethnic identity negotiation among Sami youth living in a majority Sami community in Norway
International journal of circumpolar health, 2017
This study was part of the international research project "Circumpolar Indigenous Pathways to Adulthood" (CIPA). To explore ethnic identity negotiation, an unexplored theme, among indigenous North Sami youth living in a majority Sami community context in Arctic Norway. A qualitative design was followed using open-ended, in-depth interviews conducted in 2010 with 22 Sami adolescents aged 13-19 years, all reporting Sami self-identification. Grounded theory, narrative analysis, theories of ethnic identity and ecological perspectives on resilience were applied in order to identify the themes. All 22 youth reported being open about either their Sami background (86%) and/or ethnic pride (55%). Ethnic pride was reported more often among females (68%) than males (27%). However, a minority of youth (14%) with multi-ethnic parentage, poor Sami language skills, not having been born or raised in the community and with a lack of reindeer husbandry affiliation experienced exclusion by c...
Revoicing Sámi narratives: north Sámi storytelling at the turn of the 20th century
2008
Revoicing Sámi narratives investigates the relationship between storytellers, contexts and collective tradition, based on an analysis of North Sámi narratives published in the early 1900s. This dissertation "revoices" narratives by highlighting the coexistence of different voices or socio-ideological languages in repertoires and by considering Sámi narratives as utterances by storytellers rather than autonomous products of tradition. Thus, this study serves as an act of "revoicing," of recovering voices that had been silenced by the scientific discourse which enveloped their passage into print. Narrators considered "tradition bearers" were interviewed or wrote down folk narratives that were interpreted as representative of a static, dying culture. The approach chosen in this thesis highlights the dynamic and conscious choices of narrative strategies made by these storytellers and the implications of the discourses expressed in narration. By taking into account the intense context of social change going on in Sápmi at the time the narratives emerged, as well as the context that includes narrators, ethnographers and tradition, the analysis demonstrates that storytelling is an elaboration that takes place in negotiation with tradition, genres and individual preferences. The repertoires of four storytellers are studied according to a methodological framework consisting in critical discourse analysis from a folkloristic perspective. The analysis underscores the polyphony of the narratives by Johan Turi, who related with skillfulness of tradition by taking position as a conscious social actor. This study also investigates the repertoires of storytellers Ellen Utsi, Per Baer and Isak Eira who were interviewed by the Norwegian "lappologist" Just K. Qvigstad. Their contributions to his extensive collection of Sámi narratives express their relation to tradition and to the heteroglossia that surrounded them. Based on a receptionalist approach, this dissertation investigates the implications of these narratives for the North Sámi community at the turn of the twentieth century. Storytelling appears to have had a set of functions for community members, from the normative as regards socialization, information and warning against dangers to the defensive with the elaboration of a discourse about solidarity, identity and empowerment.
Fragments of the Future. Decolonization in Sami Everyday Life
2016
In this article, I use qualitative data from Northern Norway to explore how Sami fragmentation is articulated and performed in people’s everyday life. The people who have participated in the project tell stories about how they experience being Sami in a Northern Norwegian context. Some have had a strong sense of Sami identity their whole life, while others have experienced great changes regarding their articulations of Saminess. Rather than understanding the inbetween space between Norwegian and Sami culture as something that creates scattered identities, I analyze the performative Saminess in people’s everyday life. I use a postcolonial and Indigenous perspective to discuss how decolonization, as a way of dealing with cultural fragmentation, is something that people perform in their everyday life. Indigenous peoples experience a fragmentation that is a direct result of colonization. This fragmentation thus is less a choice than a constant reminder of the loss of land, languages, tr...
Arctic and North
In this special section of journal "Arctic and North" renowned and younger scholars from Finland and Norway take on the topic of research on the Sámi, from the era of "Lappology" to the era of "Sámi research". The focus in the articles varies between research history, historiography and history of science. Thematically, the articles range from longer overviews of the historical evolution and transformation of "Lappology" in their national settings to more focused articles on individual scholars, as well as an article on Sámi historiography with a methodological approach. Two articles focus on the genesis of more culturally sensitive Sámi research.
Decolonizing landscapes: indigenous perceptions of place, morality and memory as forms of resistance
Norwegian ethnologist Jakob Melöe (1988:400) once wrote " a landscape belongs to those who belong to it. " Behind his thoughts were the experiences of the world from two different perceptions – that of the Norwegian fisherman and that of the Sámi reindeer herder, creating what he called two landscapes of northern Norway. These two groups according to Melöe view the world through different sets of skills attached to their livelihoods that create a language and identity placed in relation to the land or water they work from. For example, a natural harbor can only be known to someone who is in need for one. Or the perfect lichens for grazing reindeer on can only be known by knowing how reindeer feed. Thus, those who belong to a landscape express a shared identity with it based on different forms of engagement. Engaging with a landscape is simultaneously what makes a landscape. To know where you are is bound by how you come to perceive the landscape. It is this philosophical standpoint that I find interesting to consider where dual landscapes overlap and at times become highly contested. While Melöe describes two landscapes of Norway through sets of skills, I wish to make a point of how colonial and indigenous power relations also come into play, changing perceptions of the landscape to forms of resistance. And to understand this, you must also know something about when you are and how the present is experienced through the past. Decolonization is what I use to describe how indigenous points of view are asserted through landscape in recognition of colonial structures that inhibit indigenous landscapes. For many indigenous peoples, place and memory are intertwined in landscapes of competing worldviews, sharing in the indigenous and the colonial, the traditional and the modern. With the examples I present in this paper from North America and Swedish Sápmi, indigenous past is constantly present for indigenous communities. Among Crow Indians in Montana and their Sioux brothers and sisters in the Dakotas, the past is often up close and personal, directly linked through generations of people in the same place at different times, carried on through vivid storytelling. For Sámi reindeer herders, much of this is the same. The past is known by the coming of age and the changes to herding life – whether it is for the herder or the reindeer, it is the same. When looking at what brings such changes to livelihoods and cultural ways for the Crow, the Sioux and the Sámi, they are linked to similar processes of colonialism and concepts of development. I give examples of how some indigenous persons reach for the past as a means to understand the present and act upon colonial structures, allowing them to decolonize time and space. First I address the protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline and the prophecy of the Black Snake. Then I shall review an example from the Crow Nation in Montana and how they negotiate indigenous meanings in landscape and stories in recovery programs. And finally, I will reflect upon an example from a Sámi reindeer herding community and the uncovering of old dwelling sites used to secure rights to the land.
Journal of Social Archaeology, 2018
Indigenous social movements contest histories of relocation, assimilation, and inequality. Archaeologists too have identified such processes in recent and deeper time. But what can ongoing sites of indigenous resistance tell us about those of the archaeological record, and what is the value in the present of linking such phenomena through time? The production of material culture embodies the motivations and constraints of these movements. Objects made and used promise to bridge temporalities, yet have been largely overlooked by anthropologists. To strengthen the ability to theorize such movements, we carry out an archaeological ethnography with the Skolt Sámi community of Arctic Finland. We focus our analysis on revitalization movements—a phenomena recognized at archaeological sites from the Pueblo homelands to western Europe—whereby communities intentionally direct cultural change in response to social stress. We bring anthropological conceptions of revitalization into dialogue with definitions of the term enacted by indigenous communities. The study analyzes the revival of technologies associated with Skolt lifeways: a boat made of planks sewn together with pine roots, and tools used to process inner pine bark.
Time and Mind, 2021
In past decades landscapes have become recognized as essentially liminal systems: there has been an increased appreciation for the embeddedness of lived experiences of places in four-dimensional space-time and the landscape's connections with perceptions, stories, the material and immaterial pasts, as well as the material and immaterial present and future. Kilpisjärvi is such a place where immaterial pasts, presents, and futures consolidate into lived experiences. Intimate narratives of the local inhabitants and enveloping environment are produced through the intermingling of traditional ways of living and being with the development of modern perspectives and infrastructures. This photo essay glimpses at the flow of interconnected stories of becoming of an Arctic village's lifeworld. It glances at what has never been built nor written down, what has been built over, the local anecdotes that speak to these, and how this amalgamation of interweaving materiality and disembodiment shape an understanding of Kilpisjärvi and its inhabitants from an insiders and outsiders perspective. The essay takes the reader through the liminal landscapes of reindeer, reindeer herders, tourist organizations, and village life, and its analysis advances our understanding of how these all connect in a meshwork that teaches old and new ways of viewing the environment.
Visualizing Sami waterscapes in northern Norway from an archaeological perspective
A Circumpolar Reappraisal: The Legacy of Gutorm Gjessing (1906-1979). BAR International Series 2154., 2010
Changing concepts of ethnicity within archaeology have had a significant impact on attitudes towards the Sami and reveal the pitfalls of attaching ethnic labels to material remains. Here the importance of Sami waterscapes and water-based activity is examined by assessing the potential of material culture from a wide range of aquatic and terrestrial sources situated within the complex ethnic context of northern Norway. The potential of Sami waterscapes as cultural heritage and challenges to documentation within the Norwegian cultural heritage management system are assessed. Issues that reflect a failure to accurately represent Sami waterscapes are then discussed, including associations between primitive watercraft and Sami identity, sewn boats as a Sami ethnic marker, and the role of Norwegian icons such as the Nordland boat in diminishing Sami visibility. The final section of the paper highlights the need for a Sami maritime perspective and improved documentation of Sami inland waterscapes and offers suggestions as to how this can be achieved.