Coming Back to a Sense of Community: Sami Culture, Colonial Pain and the Complexity of Decolonization
Global Friday Presents
Dr. Astri Dankertsen
Associate Professor in Sociology
Faculty of Social Sciences
Nord University, Norway
ABSTRACT: This talk is based on my research on Sámi decolonization processes in Northern Nordland and Southern Troms in Norway, where the Sámi language and culture have been marginalized and severely endangered. I focus on how Sámi cultural presence, loss and reconciliation are articulated in Sámi/Norwegian everyday life. As a result of centuries of cultural contact, in addition to colonization, assimilation and marginalization of Sámi language and culture, the categories "Norwegian" and "Sámi" are not mutually exclusive, but rather positions in an intercultural space. Inspired by Homi Bhabha (1994: 114) and Rauna Kuokkanen (2000), I argue that talking about Sámi identities and "pure", "authentic" Sámi culture and tradition can suggest racist notions of an archeological culture frozen in the past. We can link this to a colonial hierarchy, where the West, by definition, is viewed as pure and authentic, while the Others are always understood as colonized, impure and "inauthentic" (Bhabha 1994). This is a view which, in turn, denies present day Sámi people in communities like the ones I have studied, the possibility of a future.
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