Indigenism and Cosmopolitanism

INDIGENISM AND COSMOPOLITANISM A pan- Sami view of the Indigenous perspective in Sami culture and research Harald Gaski* Abstract This article explores Sami cultural and literary research in a pan- Sami perspective, contextual- izing it in relation to the emergence of similar research among other Indigenous peoples in the world, termed Indigenous methodology. The article summarizes the development within the fi eld so far, arguing for stronger Sami participation in the international discourse on the role of Indigenous peoples within academia. Indigenous methodology is inspired by the development within postcolonial and decolonizing studies and places Indigenous peoples at the centre, while simultaneously seeking to Indigenize academia. The approach questions which values ought to guide research, and to what degree Indigenous peoples should expect research to have a trans- formative effect on society. What is the role and place of Indigenous peoples’ own values and worldviews in scholarship in general? The article underscores the importance of having developed Sami as an academic language, a great achievement in a world where more and more Indigenous languages are becoming extinct. Keywords Indigenous peoples, Sami and Indigenous research, Indigenous methodology, Indigenism, Sami literature * Faculty for Humanities, Social Sciences, and Education, University of Tromsø, Norway. Email: [email protected] 114 H. GASKI Introduction from both North Sami and Finnish. Fjellner had mastered all of these languages, and, for the There are two central points that I want to record, let me just point out that the differences underscore in this article. The fi rst is the all- Sami, between South Sami and North Sami are com- or the pan- Sami perspective, as I have chosen parable to those between English and German. to call it, inspired by the pan-Sami intentions Anders Fjellner was an educated minister of Anders Fjellner in the myth he wrote down who graduated from the University of Uppsala about the Sami people being the children of the in 1821. A South Sami himself, Fjellner was sun. The second point is the Indigenous perspec- born in 1795 under open skies during the fall tive in Sami scholarship. My aim is to discuss, migration of the reindeer from the Norwegian albeit briefl y, these two positions in the view of side of the border back to Härjedalen in the struggle in recent decades for, and recogni- Sweden. Fjellner was a native speaker of South tion of, Indigenous approaches to academia in Sami. During his 20 years as a minister in the general, and research on Indigenous peoples Karesuando region in Northern Sweden, he and cultures more specifi cally. I will try to relate also developed competence in North Sami and my deliberations to different approaches with the Finnish language of settlers to the region. regard to Indigenous research—such as nation- During his years as a student in Uppsala, alist, Indigenist, and cosmopolitan (Krupat, Fjellner became interested in folk poetry, and 2002)—at the same time as I introduce Sami set his mind on creating a Sami mythic and epic research in an international Indigenous context. tradition similar to the Finnish Kalevala, which My examples will mainly be Sami, which is the he did with his Biejjien baernie epic poetry. He culture closest to me, being a Sami myself with was inspired to write down the epic poems he Sami as my mother tongue. Also, in my current had heard in his South Sami homeland when position, Sami language is the main instrument he became acquainted with similar traditions in my teaching and research. during his service as a minister in the North. The pan-Sami agenda applies both linguis- One of the most interesting things about tically and culturally, not in the sense that we translating “The Son of the Sun’s Courting in should be working to develop a common Sami the Land of the Giants” into North Sami—and language, but rather in the sense of respecting then participating in the project of translating common foundational values and traditions. it back to South Sami—has been discovering In the work of the early missionaries the goal just how pan- Sami Fjellner’s text is, in terms was to create a common Sami language, but of language, culture, and of course, mythology given the substantial internal differences that (Gaski, 2003). What my co-translator and PhD exist between the different languages, that student, Lena Kappfjell, and I thought would goal remains a utopia—assuming anyone still be an easy task, bringing Fjellner’s text back wants to move in that direction these days. to what everyone has always considered to “Standardization” of this sort was part of intel- be its original language—South Sami—turned lectual projects in Sweden and Norway at the out to be just about as demanding of time and time. In a sense, Fjellner was trying to establish resources as the work of translating it into the Sami nation alongside other national pro- North Sami. Fjellner must really have striven to jects under way in the region. Nevertheless, it choose words from the different Sami languages was this sort of desire that lay behind Fjellner’s in an attempt to show that, even in terms of linguistic choices in his writing of the Biejjien language, there was one common Sami liter- baernie cycle (The Son of the Sun mythic poem), ary legacy. where the foundation is a fi gurative South Sami, The theme of this article is not a linguistic rich in metaphors, and interspersed with loans or literary analysis of Fjellner’s Biejjien baernie INDIGENISM AND COSMOPOLITANISM 115 cycle; I simply wanted to say a few introduc- 60 years, these values and traditions have still tory words about Fjellner and his contribution taken part in forming our common understand- towards creating a common literary and cultural ing of what is valuable and important in Sami legacy for the entire Sami people by offering the culture. These values and traditions have been Sami our own creation myth and our own epic. transmitted to succeeding generations through Beyond that, I want to emphasize the signifi - our language and our stories, through child cance and necessity of seeing Sami culture as rearing, proverbs, yoiks (songs) and attitudes. one culture with common foundational values That is why research on Sami literature and in the north, south, west and east. My point of traditions is important; it helps us to understand reference is Sami literature—in this case primar- these traditions, and to extract the knowledge ily seen from a South Sami perspective, which that oral tradition has maintained. That is why does not happen too often—and my task is to it is meaningful, even for the Sami of today, to exemplify Sami cultural history in a pan- Sami focus on similarities and on our common foun- approach to the topic. I attempt to contextual- dational values, and to view language as our ize Sami scholarship within an international most important tradition bearer—as a reservoir Indigenous discourse. The pan- Sami perspective of knowledge from which to draw. is actually fairly well accepted in historical and At the time the Nordic Sami Institute was archaeological research. But it has, naturally established as a research body in the mid-1970s, enough, been more controversial when it comes the Sami were at the forefront in demanding a to language and literature. Language is, in addi- change from being objects of research to occu- tion to being the main means of communication pying a subject position where we ourselves between peoples, at the same time a very per- wanted to be involved in laying out the premises sonal issue; it demonstrates our belonging to for scholarship. From being one of the world’s culture, geography, social class and level of most researched peoples, the Sami eventually cultivation, or cultural sophistication. For a lot took the step to initiating our own research of people, not knowing one’s own indigenous based on our own premises. In 1976 the Sami language feels like a big loss and imperfection, philosopher Alf Isak Keskitalo published his and thus contributes to the psychological aspect trailblazing essay “Research as an inter- ethnic of the identity question connected to language relation,” which, ever since, has been a piece of competence. writing Sami academics have always returned to in search of arguments to describe the asym- metry in power relations between indigenous The ability to read nature and non- indigenous groups within academia. This way of thinking harmonized well with In order to understand what Fjellner’s aim was what was happening in other places in the and how it relates to the broader questions of world, such as North America, Australia and this article, it is important to understand how New Zealand. As time went on a political move- Sami people have looked at knowledge and its ment grew, crystallizing in the establishment of owners over time. In Sami culture the ability the World Council of Indigenous Peoples, while to read nature and its inhabitants, both ani- at the same time the political mobilization was mal and human, has been an important skill. followed up by Indigenous voices that involved When it is considered an important part of the themselves directly in research and demanded a culture, the person who possesses these abilities transformation of approaches and methodolo- is considered a learned person by the Sami. At gies—a transformation from being the objects least that’s the way it was in the past. And even of research to having the possibility of con- though much has changed over the past 50 or ducting one’s own research.

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