August 2021-July 2024
The New Sámi Renaissance: Nordic Colonialism, Social Change and Indigenous Cultural Policy (NESAR)
NESAR is an international and interdisciplinary research project which examines how the dynamics of colonialism and Sámi cultural revitalization are articulated on the level of contemporary arts and popular culture. The project is funded by the Research Council of Norway’s program for Media and Culture.
Our point of departure is that Nordic colonialism is not a thing of the past – it is reproduced actively in the present. Secondly, we recognize that along with Sámi cultural revitalization, there is also growing general interest in Sáminess across the Nordic societies, which is reflected especially in the arts and popular culture as Sámi artists, productions, designs and themes have become increasingly popular and prominent. Our aim is to investigate how the relationships between the Sámi and majority societies are contested, reorganized, and reproduced in this context, and to explore what are the new issues, concerns and possibilities that the growing interest in Sámi arts, culture and identity is presenting to the Sámi society on the level of cultural politics and policy.
NESAR seeks to bring together concepts and approaches in Cultural Studies, Indigenous Studies and Sámi Research, and it is conducted through active collaboration between Sámi and non-Sámi scholars in Norway, Sweden, Finland and North America (Canada). The project lasts three years, from August 2021 to July 2024, and it is based at the Arctic University Museum of Norway in Tromsø.
The project is affiliated with the SAMFORSK (Research on Sámi research and Representation of Sámi Cultural Heritage) research group hosted by the Arctic University Museum and the Academy of Fine Arts (UMAK).
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May 2019- May 2021
Indigenous Research, Institutionalisation and Neo-Politicisation: A Conjunctural Analysis of Sami Research in Finland (INREPOSA)
This project examines how the relationship between politics and indigenous Sámi research has been reshaped in Finland since the 1970s, in tandem with broader social change, Sámi institution building, and shifts in Finland’s policy towards the Sámi. The project is grounded on an observation that over the past decades, academic knowledge production has become increasingly central in debates relating to Finland’s indigenous policy. On one hand, Finland now invests increasingly in research relating to the Sámi, as part of its official Arctic strategy, and to promote socially and culturally sustainable policies in the Sámi homeland region. On the other hand, instead of supporting the development of Sámi rights or dialogue between the state and the Sámi Parliament, academization of policy debates seems to have contributed to political impasse and to the exacerbation of inter-ethnic conflicts in Northern Finland. A primary example of this is the emergence of new (academic) debates over Sámi identity, which center on the criteria of acceptance to Sámi Parliaments electoral roll, and which have resulted in a broad divergence between the Sámi Parliament and the Finnish state.
The project investigates the background and socio-political forces and developments behind these largely contradictory processes, in order to explore how academic and expert knowledge is currently operationalized in the context of governmental policies concerning an indigenous minority, and to explore the challenges that indigenous Sámi research, which emerged in the 1970s as a critical approach committed to indigenous self-determination, is facing in the present context. The interdisciplinary project brings together insights from Cultural Studies, Politics, Indigenous studies and Settler Colonial studies, and builds especially on conjunctural analysis associated with the work of Stuart Hall. The main outcome of the project is an original research monograph.
The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 845232.
Principal Investigator: Dr. Laura Junka-Aikio.
Other researchers: N/A
Key Publications:
Junka-Aikio, Laura (2022) Whose Settler Colonial State? Arctic Railway, State Transformation and Settler Self-Indigenisation in Northern Finland. Postcolonial Studies, published online 1. August.
Junka-Aikio, Laura, Nyyssönen, Jukka and Lehtola, Veli-Pekka (2021) “Sámi Research in Transition: Introduction”. In Junka-Aikio, Nyyssönen and Lehtola eds. Sámi Research in Transition: Knowledge, Politics and Social Change. London: Routledge.
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December 2017-December 2020
The Societal Dimensions of Sámi Research (Sodi-Sámi)
“The Societal Dimensions of Sámi Research” is a research group, which connects scholars from Tromsø University Museum, Umeå University and Giellagas Institute at the University of Oulu.
The key aim of the group is to advance research on the evolving relationships between scholarly productions on the Sámi and Nordic societies. The central premise underlying this research group is that in order to understand these relationships, it is important to study the complex societal conditions, which have framed the production of academic knowledge in different periods. The research group is multidisciplinary and highly comparative in nature, and the material examined will cover research-society relationships in the High North from the ‘Lappologist’ era to the present.
Our point of departure is that the complex interdependence between scholarly knowledge production and society goes both ways and we are interested in both, 1) how different institutional and societal contexts as well as discourses have impacted upon the production of knowledge regarding the Sámi across time? And, 2) how has this academic knowledge actually impacted upon Sámi communities and their standing within the Nordic societies?
Three thematic fields have been selected in order to focus fieldworks and allow for comparisons: “The Societal Dimensions of Research on the Sámi in Norway and Finland’ builds a broader, historically and internationally comparative understanding of the ways in which the relationship between academic knowledge and society has transformed in the context of academic knowledge concerning the Sámi in Finland and Norway”. “Museums as Arenas for Production and Dissemination of Knowledge on Sámi Cultures, Societies and Identities”, examines how the relationships between science and society have changed in the context of Nordic museums, and whether and how these changes have impacted upon the societal discourses surrounding the Sámi. Finally, the third thematic field “Nordic Media as a Field for Negotiating Scholarly Knowledge on the Sámi” explores how knowledge, produced by scholars working with Sámi issues, is articulated, transformed or omitted through the channels of Nordic digital media. How has media’s images and discourses affected researchers’ focus and results, and thus the professional and disseminated understandings of Sámi pasts and presents?
Researchers:
Prof. Trude Fonneland (University Museum, the Arctic University of Norway)
Assoc. Prof. Jukka Nyyssönen (University Museum, the Arctic University of Norway)
Prof. Ivar Bjørklund (University Museum, the Arctic University of Norway)
Dr. Laura Junka-Aikio (University Museum, the Arctic University of Norway)
Dr. Cathrine Baglo (University Museum, the Arctic University of Norway)
Curator Dikka Storm (University Museum, the Arctic University of Norway)
Assoc. prof. Rossella Ragazzi (University Museum, the Arctic University of Norway)
PhD researcher Eli-Anita Øivand-Schøning (University Museum, the Arctic University of Norway)
Prof. Veli-Pekka Lehtola (Giellagas Institute, University of Oulu)
Prof. Anni-Siiri Länsman (Institution head, Giellagas Institute for Sámi Research, University of Oulu)
Dr. Solveig Joks (Sámi University College)
Dr. Silje Opdahl Mathisen (University of Oslo)
Prof. Coppélie Cocq (University of Helsinki)
LL.M. Antti Aikio (University of Lapland)