Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway

Charlotte de Jong

In cooperation with The National Museum of World Cultures: Museum Volkenkunde, Leiden

S1134396 Supervisor: Prof. dr. Pieter ter Keurs Date: June 28, 2017

Word count: 29,646 (including in-text references, excluding bibliography) Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction ...... 4 1.1 Description of fieldwork ...... 6 Chapter 2. Politics, protests and society ...... 14 2.1 Introduction to Sámi history ...... 14 2.2 History of assimilation ...... 17 2.3 Sámi politics nowadays ...... 22 2.4 Sámi struggles nowadays ...... 23 Chapter 3. Theoretical background ...... 25 3.1 Identity and identity formation ...... 25 3.2 Material culture and its power ...... 31 3.3 Museums and museum representation...... 34 3.4 Being indigenous ...... 36 Chapter 4. Methods ...... 39 4.1 Operationalization...... 39 4.2 Methodology ...... 40 4.3 Ethical considerations and the position of the researcher in the field...... 44 Chapter 5. Museums, representation and identity ...... 46 5.1 Museum Volkenkunde ...... 46 5.2 Introduction to national and Sámi museums ...... 47 5.3 National museums: Tromsø museum and Alta museum...... 48 5.4 Sámi museums: Karasjok museum and Kautokeino museum ...... 61 5.5 The North Norwegian Art museum and exhibition ‘There is no’ ...... 67 5.6 Conclusion: the future of Sámi museums? ...... 71 Chapter 6. Analysis and conclusion ...... 73 6.1 Sámi revitalization: discovering being Sámi ...... 73 6.2 The role of material culture ...... 75 6.3 Identity representation in museums ...... 77 6.4 Conclusion: answering research question ...... 79 6.5 Recommendations ...... 81 Bibliography...... 83

1 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong

Table of images

Image 1 - Cake to celebrate the Sámi national day...... 9 Image 2 - Women wearing gákti's in different styles during the 6th of February celebrations at the Radhuset...... 9 Image 3 - Part of the 'Sámi culture' exhibition...... 49 Image 4 - Part of the 'Sámi culture' exhibition...... 49 Image 5 - Part of the 'Sámi culture' exhibition ...... 50 Image 6 - Part of the 'Sámi culture' exhibition ...... 50 Image 7 - The entrance towards the 'Sápmi - becoming a nation' exhibition ...... 52 Image 8 - The text at the entrance of the 'Sápmi - becoming a nation' exhibition. First in Sámi, then in Norwegian and lastly in English...... 53 Image 10 - In the 'Sápmi - becoming a nation' exhibition. Placing Sámi history in a global context...... 54 Image 9 - The style of the 'Sápmi - becoming a nation' exhibition...... 54 Image 11 - Part of the 'Sápmi - becoming a nation' exhibition. Showing how the World War II speeded up the assimilation...... 55 Image 12 - A coat made of sheep in the 'Na, maid dá?' exhibition...... 56 Image 13 - A gákti in the 'Na, maid dá?' exhibition ...... 57 Image 14 - The bonnet horn in the 'No, maid dá?' exhibition...... 58 Image 15 - The part in the museum about the Alta Kautokeino conflict with many protest posters...... 59 Image 16 - A Sámi drum at the Karasjok Museum...... 62 Image 17 - Mannequins in the Museum...... 63 Image 18 - A museum diorama of a Sámi man on a sled pulled by a reindeer...... 63 Image 19 - A display of different Sámi clothing...... 64 Image 20 - An old picture of Kautokeino at the entrance of the Museum...... 65 Image 21 - An overview of the Kautokeino Museum...... 65 Image 23 - Clothing from the Kautokeino area...... 66 Image 22 - Duodji items in the Kautokeino Museum...... 66 Image 24 - Another text on the wall of the museum, first in Sámi...... 68 Image 25 - Photo taken by the North Norwegian Art Museum...... 69 Image 27 - Overview of one of the halls...... 70 Image 26 - A bowl made by Monica Edmonson...... 70 Image 28 - Duodji and art come together...... 71 Image 30 - The table filled with Sámi knives...... 72 Image 29 - A gákti made of food packaging...... 72

2 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway

Acknowledgments

This research would not have become what it is now without the help of Dr. Cunera Buijs, curator at the The National Museum of World Cultures, Museum Volkenkunde. She has helped me in creating new ideas, finding literature, and just being there to listen to me being excited about the Arctic. I want to thank Museum Volkenkunde in offering me an inspiring workplace where I was able to write a large part of this thesis, make use of the computer systems and library. I also want to thank my supervisor, Professor dr. Pieter ter Keurs, for his comments and remarks, for sharing with me his experience in doing fieldwork, and above all, letting me work independently so that I was able to make this research my own. Special thanks go to the Research Center of Material Culture in granting me the Steven Engelsman Grant. Without it I would not have been able to conduct the research I have done. I want to thank all the museums I have visited in Norway and my contacts there: The Tromsø Museum, the Alta Museum, The RiddoDuottarMuseat in Karasjok and Kautokeino, and the North Norwegian Art Museum. Without their cooperation, I would be without a research! I want to thank my parents and sister for all their support. And especially Mo, for all his patience, input and for listening to my overexcited stories about my fieldwork.

Charlotte de Jong

3 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong

Chapter 1. Introduction

Before starting this research, I thought I would not experience any cultural shock. I knew Norway, I even lived there. Well, I was wrong. Here I was, just walked through a meter of snow with minus 30 degrees Celsius. I was wearing five layers of clothes, but my hands and nose were still freezing. The sun was setting at 3pm, and I was standing all by myself on a frozen river, in a small town where everyone knew each other except me. But it was the most beautiful view I have ever seen. It could not get better than this, I thought. And then, two men appeared, both holding a reindeer on a leash, walking them over the river. This thesis combines the topics of material culture, museum representation and identity formation in the case of the Sámi living in the north of Norway. The Sámi are an indigenous people living in the north Norway, Sweden, Finland and on the Kola-peninsula of Russia. They are mostly known as reindeer herders migrating with their herds from winter to summer pastures, however most Sámi do not have this livelihood and there are many differences between Sámi groups. There are the coastal Sámi who used to live of fish, forest Sámi, Skolt Sami originating from Russia and Finland, and other groups (Lehtola 2004). ‘Traditional’ livelihoods, such as reindeer herding, are not widespread. Only a small percentage of Sámi nowadays can make a live of reindeer herding. Recently, people are finding out about their Sámi background, as a large group of people tried to hide the fact that they were Sámi due to discrimination and stigmatization as a result of decades of assimilation policies. In Norway, you can say you are Sámi when one of your parents or grandparents spoke Sámi and you feel Sámi. If this is the case, you can register yourself at the Sametinget, the Sámi parliament, and vote for the Sámi political parties. The research question of this thesis is: How has material culture and identity representation in museums influenced the struggle for more rights and identity formation of Sámi in Northern Norway? To support this question there are four sub-questions that I will answer: 1. How have the Sámi struggled for indigenous rights and what role did representations of identity and material culture in museums play in this struggle? 2. What role does Sámi material culture play during identity formation?

4 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway

3. What effect had the Sámi cultural revitalization on Sámi identity and Sámi material culture? 4. How are material culture and identity of Sámi represented in the Volkenkunde Museum in Leiden and in the museums in Norway?

Chapter one is an introduction to the case and will discuss the object of study and the field of study. It will also give a description of the fieldwork. Chapter two explains a part of Sámi history which is necessary to understand current day issues. I believe it is impossible to understand the struggles of Sámi people today without having an understanding of their history. Sámi people have experienced many struggles. One of my respondents even used the term “cultural genocide” referring to the assimilation period from the previous century which has had a major impact on the position of Sámi culture today. Even though there is no assimilation from the Norwegian government anymore and on paper the Sámi seem to have many rights, the implementation of these laws and the attitude from non-Sámi, including the Norwegian government, is far from accepting the Sámi culture as a part of Norway. Chapter three discusses the theoretical background of this thesis. It addresses key concepts such as identity and identity formation, material culture, museums and museum representation, and indigeneity. Chapter four explains the methods that have been used during this research: collection-based research, semi-structured interviews and observations. Also the ethical considerations attached to doing indigenous research will be discussed. Chapter five then describes the fieldwork conducted at the Volkenkunde Museum and the museums I visited in Norway. Chapter six is the analysis and conclusion of this research, answering the sub- and research question of this thesis. The field of study of this research is demarcated in two different groups. One group are Sámi in Northern Norway living in Alta, Karasjok and Kautokeino. The second group are museums that exhibit Sámi objects or art. The first group is connected to a specific area: Finnmark, the northern most region of Norway. This area is traditionally seen as Sámi area and is part of the area that is called Sápmi, which means the land of the Sámi’s (Lehtola 2004). Geographically, the ‘borders’ of Sápmi go to the middle of Norway, however Finnmark is seen as heart of the Sámi land. However, Sámi people live all over Norway, such as the south and in Oslo. It is also not true that Sámi people traditionally only lived in the north of Norway (Lehtola 2004). Also, when looking at the three different Sámi languages, it

5 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong becomes clear that Sámi were living more south. The three languages are North-Sámi, Lule- Sámi which is spoken in the middle of Norway, and South-Sámi. North-Sámi and Lule-Sámi speaking people can understand each other, however South-Sámi is very different from the other two languages (Lehtola 2004). The second group are museums that exhibit Sámi objects or art. This research started in Leiden, the Netherlands, at the Volkenkunde museum. This museum has a collection of almost 500 Sámi objects. Most objects were collected in the 1970s and contain small household items, duodji, which are traditional Sámi handicrafts. Four museums in Norway are also part of this research: the Tromsø Museum, the Alta Museum, and two museums that are part of the RiddoDuottarMuseat in Karasjok and Kautokeino. In Norway they make a distinction between Norwegian and Sámi museums. If more than half of the employees are Sámi, a museum is official a Sámi museum. If not it is a Norwegian museum. An implication of being a Sámi museum or Norwegian museum is the source of the funding for the museum. A Norwegian museum receives its funding from the Norwegian government, a Sámi museum from the Sámi government. This will be explained more in depth in Chapter five. Before describing the fieldwork, I want to make a few practical points regarding this thesis. All the pictures shown in this thesis are taken by me, except when mentioned otherwise. From a few museums, I got access to pictures they have taken of their museum and collections. Another point is that I do not mention my respondents by name if they have shared personal stories. In these cases I will anonymize their story. In the cases where no personal stories were shared and we only discussed issues regarding the museum I will mention the name of the person I spoke to.

1.1 Description of fieldwork

This research has been established in cooperation with The National Museum of World Cultures of which the Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden is part of. Throughout this research I will refer to Museum Volkenkunde, but it should be clear that this is part of a larger merger of a few museum in the Netherlands: Afrika Museum, Tropenmuseum and recently the Wereldmuseum. Museum Volkenkunde is an ethnographic museum with a collection of approximately 500 Sámi objects. The curator of the Arctic region, Dr. Cunera

6 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway

Buijs, was looking for someone who could do research on Sámi design. Even though this also being a very interesting topic, I have a background in political science and international relations, I wanted to combine this knowledge with cultural anthropology. I therefore wanted to look more into the struggle of the Sámi for more rights and their identity formation and decided to connect this to the use of material culture. I am not new to studying Sámi history and culture. In 2014, I lived in Tromsø for a semester where I followed courses on Sámi culture and indigenous rights. Before starting this research I had some knowledge on the case of the Sámi in Norway. I discussed this with Cunera Buijs and we agreed that I would study the role of Sámi material culture and political processes and that I would go to Norway for a month to do fieldwork. Going for a longer period was unfortunately not possible because of finances and work in the Netherlands. One month is a very short and limited time and therefore one of my recommendations for further research is inevitably a longer fieldwork period. To finance the fieldwork, I applied for the Steven Engelsman Grant, a scholarship for research on material culture. I received 1,000 euros, which I have used to pay for flights, busses and housing. I spent the first month of the fieldwork period, January at the Museum Volkenkunde researching the online database of their Sámi collection. I decided to start with this to get a clear understanding of what type of objects there are, the background and history of these items, and learn how they are stored and saved. Important for me was also to gain knowledge about the process of collecting items. During this first period, I gained significant knowledge about the approximately 500 Sámi objects the museum has. Also, by talking to the curator about the collection and walking through the exhibition, I learned more about how museums chose the items they put on display. On the first of February, I travelled to Tromsø, the largest city of the north of Norway. As said before, I studied here for a semester in 2014 and therefore still have a network and knowledge of the city, which made it the perfect place to start. On my first day, I went to the Perspektivet Museum where a joik concert took place. Joik is the traditional way of singing of the Sámi. This was my first time hearing a joik live which was a very special moment for me. Already during this concert I was very happy that I had spent January researching the collection of Museum Volkenkunde, as I was able to recognize quite a few objects. There were some Sámi people who were not wearing the gákti, but did wear a few other items, such as Sámi shoes, special shoe bands and a poncho in the style of traditional Sámi outdoor

7 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong wear. However, I also encountered the difficulty of not speaking better Norwegian. After the concert I approached the singer but he only spoke Norwegian. I do speak a little Norwegian, but not good enough for an interview. Luckily a woman working at the museum was willing to function as an interpreter and I was able to ask him a few questions about joiking, which may not have been of relevance for this research but prepared me in starting to approach people and talk about my research. During this first week, I also had my first interview, which I had scheduled beforehand. Professor Trude Fonneland, working for the Arctic University at the Tromsø museum was willing to talk to me about my research and give me a tour through the museum. She explained to me how the collection came to what it is now and what the ideas behind it are. It was not my first time visiting this museum, as in 2014 part of the course on Arctic Culture I was taking was to visit the museum. What I find very special of this museum is that there are two exhibitions on the Sámi from two very different time periods. One of them is from 1970s, the other is from this century. Seeing the difference of perception of the Sámi in these two time periods, is what this museum makes it so interesting for me. This will be explained more in chapter five. I planned that I would be in Tromsø during the celebrations of the Sámi national day on the 6th of February. The celebrations already start at the 5th of February, with the annual reindeer race in the middle of Tromsø, which was very special to see. The reindeer with a person on ski’s behind it, run a straight track with an incredibly high speed. Reindeer races happen throughout the North and some people train for it all year (Lehtola 2004). During this day, there is also a Sámi market. It only has a few stands and a lavvu, a traditional Sámi tent. This market is for the biggest part oriented on tourists that come in with cruise ships and visit Tromsø for a few days. I tried to talk in my best Norwegian with an older Sámi man who was wearing a gákti, but most of the time he was busy with taking pictures with tourists. On the 6th of February, I first went to the celebrations at the University. This was done in at the Sámi research center with speeches from the rector of the University and poetry from Sámi people. Schoolchildren from the only school in Tromsø were they teach every course in Sámi were singing joiks. After this, there was a cake with the Sámi flag on it.

8 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway

In the afternoon, I went to the Radhuset, the municipality building, where there were more celebrations. The same school class was singing here as well and there were more speeches, this time from the major. The event ended with a concert by joik singers. The room was filled with around 80 Sámi people, most of them wearing the gákti, all in different colors. I managed to have a few conversations with some people. When I told one woman about my research she asked me if I had heard of this joke the Sámi have about anthropologist. Sámi joke that no Sámi Image 1 - Cake to celebrate the Sámi national day family is complete without an anthropologist. I am definitely not the only one. After this first week of fieldwork in Tromsø I took the bus to Alta, a small city on the west coast of Finnmark which was a seven-hour drive away. Sámi people who originally lived here, were called coastal Sámi and their livelihood often consisted of fishing (Eidheim 1971). I stayed here for two nights and rented a small room through Airbnb. By coincidence, my host turned out to be Sámi. He was not that willing to talk, so I only managed to talk with him for a brief 10 minutes when he Image 2 - Women wearing gákti's in different styles picked me up from the bus station. I during the 6th of February celebrations at the Radhuset.

9 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong asked him if he celebrated the 6th of February, and he very proudly told me that his kids had celebrated it at school and that they were wearing a gákti for the first time, which made him very proud. I wanted to go to Alta to visit the Alta museum. This is not an official Sámi museum, so not half of the museum staff has a Sámi background, but they do tell many things about the Sámi. During summer time when there is no snow, it is possible to see the rock drawings outside, which are made by Sámi. When I was visiting they just opened an exhibition considering the Bååstede project: returning objects to the area they are from. As only official Sámi museums participate in this project and as the Alta museum is not, they will not receive these objects indefinite. The Alta Museum will showcase them until autumn of this year. When talking to a woman working at the reception, they were not sure what would happen with the objects after this, and I got the impression that these objects might stay longer at the Alta museum. I did not have an official interview with someone at this museum, but planned one for a few weeks later. After two nights, and one full day spent in Alta, I took another bus, into the heart of Finnmark: Karasjok. This is a small town where almost the entire population has a Sámi background. Also, the Sámi parliament, the Sametinget, is located here. I stayed at what they call a motel, which means that you have a single person room and bathroom and share a kitchen. I arrived on an extremely cold night: -30 degrees Celsius. On my first night, I met a Finnish woman staying at the hotel who lived here for a few months to receive training from a silver smith. When she heard that I am Dutch and researched Sámi material culture she immediately told me that the next day I had to come with her to her job, as she worked with a Dutch silversmith. So I did. The next day we first went to a Sámi market organized in a gym with little stalls where people were selling all sorts of items, including many Sámi items: clothing, hats, shoes, reindeer skins, senna grass, jewelry and bibles. Most of the people present were wearing the gákti or a Sámi hat or shoes. It was very busy and offered the perfect opportunity for me to walk around, chat with people and learn more about Sámi objects. Many items were very recognizable for me. I also noticed that people immediately knew that I was a stranger. I got many looks and people assumed that I must be a tourist and tried to sell me senna grass as I must have cold feet with this weather (it was -25 degrees Celsius that day). However, chatting to people proved to be difficult. Even though I tried, many

10 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway people were not that open for having a conversation longer than a few sentences. They did not seem comfortable with it. In other cases, the person did not speak any English and the conversation would stay very simple. After the market, we went to the silversmith. It was so surreal after just being in a room full of Sámi people and hearing Norwegian and Sámi to suddenly be talking Dutch. The silversmith turned out to be the partner of a Dutch woman with whom I had been in contact through the curator of the Volkenkunde museum. So that afternoon, the silversmith told me a few things about making Sámi jewelry and how he learned to do it. I had noticed that many silversmiths in Finnmark, including the most famous one, Juhls in Kautokeino, are not Norwegian or Sámi. He explained to me that this is because there is not a good silversmith school in Norway and that therefore many people come from outside Norway. That weekend in Karasjok I met up with a man I met through Couchsurfing. He is Norwegian from the south of Norway and just moved to Karasjok. As I did not know that much people there, I thought it would be nice to meet up. We went to the Karasjok museum, where I met a woman working there who was interested in being interviewed. Due to time, we had to arrange it when I was back in the Netherlands and had the interview via Skype. I talked to the man about my research and he offered to ask a few people at his workplace if they would like to be interviewed. At his work place, a psychological institute, most people are Sámi and he managed to find a colleague that was willing to be interviewed by me. So the next day, on Tuesday the 14th of February, I went to the psychological institute in Karasjok and met up with the woman. We had a very interesting interview, as she told me that she only learned on a later age that her family has a Sámi background. She did not grow up in Karasjok but moved here later to learn the Sámi language, and told me about the stigmatization she endured from the Sámi community that have ‘grown up’ as Sámi’s. She also told me about the stigmatization towards Sámi in the Norwegian healthcare system. For example, if someone does not speak Norwegian there should be an interpreter available. However, in the case of a Sámi person, nurses and doctors often do not think of providing an interpreter. Especially in cases where the patient is a bit older, they have trouble to communicate in Norwegian, namely regarding medical terms. Besides that, in Sámi culture people often relied on natural remedies and shamanism, and there are people who still believe in this. The medical system is not responsive to this and often does not understand

11 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong the situation of a Sámi person. She gave me an example of a Sámi man who was diagnosed with a mild depression and was given the advice to go for a walk outside every day. However, the man, a reindeer herder, spent most of his days outside and did not feel understood with this medical advice. This proved the lack of understanding for the situation of Sámi people, she said. So, the woman and her co-workers are working on a e-course that teaches medical staff to become more culturally aware. Besides this interview, the next day I had another interview scheduled, this time with two women working at the Karasjok museum. I talk about the details of this interview in Chapter five. Throughout the days, I walked around a lot, observing how life in a small town goes. I also visited the Sámediggi, the Sámi parliament. On my first day there I had a guided tour through the building. In the parliament, there is also a large library which is open for the public. All the books are about the Sámi and there is also a large section in English. The next day I went again and spent the whole morning reading books and taking notes. After almost a week, I order a bus to Kautokeino which you have to do because the towns are so small and they want to know how much people take the bus. After a confusing phone call in Norwegian, I managed to book the bus. Turned out that I was the only one travelling to Kautokeino that day, and therefore they had arranged a taxi. The taxi driver was an older Sámi man from Kautokeino who was very chatty, unfortunately only spoke Norwegian and Sámi but I managed to have some sort of conversation with him. He tried to teach me how to joik and speak Sámi. As I was very eager to see a reindeer herd, as I had not yet seen any besides two reindeer being walked by their owners on a frozen river in Karasjok, my taxi driver looked out for them and stopped his car so I could take some pictures. I arrived in Kautokeino at another motel, ran by an elderly Sámi woman, who also did not speak a word of English. Luckily, I had my dictionary ready and managed to have small conversation with her. In Karasjok I have visited a few things. Firstly, the Karasjok museum which I will elaborate on in Chapter five. I also visited Juhls Jewelry, I think the most famous silversmith of Sámi jewelry where I talked to the daughter of the owner and learned about the history of Sámi jewelry. I unfortunately did not manage to interview any other people. Especially in Kautokeino, language proofed to be difficult as I encountered many people that did not speak any English.

12 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway

After Kautokeino I went to Alta for one night, on my way to Tromsø. I took the bus in the early morning and went to the Alta museum for an interview with Eva Johansen. You can read more about this interview in Chapter five. The next day I went back to Tromsø, where I spent my last few days of the fieldwork. During these days I went to the opening of the exhibition ‘There is no’ at the North Norwegian Art Museum. Exhibition might not be the correct word for this as the entire museum changed into a Sámi art museum. More on this in Chapter five. It was a perfect end to my whole trip. I arrived back in the Netherlands on the 28th of February. The month of March I used to transcribe the interviews I had conducted and read more literature.

13 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong

Chapter 2. Politics, protests and society

This chapter will discuss more in-depth the background of the Sámi. I will touch upon the history of assimilation, the political situation of the past and present, and the Sámi and the Norwegian society. But first, I will start with giving a small overview of Sámi history. As this research focuses on northern Norway, most of this chapter is focused on the history of the Sámi in Norway. However, as the Sámi lived in the Fenno-Scandinavian area before borders were drawn, I feel it is necessary to discuss the situation of the Sámi that also live across the Norwegian borders, before explaining the history of assimilation focused on the Sámi in northern Norway.

2.1 Introduction to Sámi history

The Sámi: “One people in four nation states” or “A people divided by borders (Henriksen 1999, 16; Lehtola 2004, 9). These are often the starting points of explaining Sámi history. Estimating the number of people with a Sámi background is hard to do (Henriksen 1999, 24). Even a census does not provide certain figures as “so many people still do not acknowledge their Saami background, mostly because of the historical discrimination and stigmatization of the Saami” (Henriksen 1999, 24). I feel that this quote, written in 1999, is still true in some part, but that there is a tendency of people exploring their Sámi background as there are people that did not know about their Sámi background until at a later age. In any case, asking someone if he or she is Sámi, is not that straightforward as it might seem. The origin of the Sámi has been of interest of many researchers, because of the uniqueness of Sámi culture compared to the majority of the population living in the same region (Lehtola 2004, 20). Especially the reindeer herding Sámi protrude against their neighbors doing agriculture. There have been thoughts that the Sámi must have originated from Mongolia or even from the Basque area in Spain (Lehtola 2004, 20). As Lehtola explains: “The basic assumption of such theories has generally been that Sámi became isolated as a population, thus preserving at least some of their original characteristics” (2004, 20). This was actually not the case, as it turns out that the Sámi are not genetically a uniform group. Besides that, they have not lived isolated as assumed. The Sámi have been in

14 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway contact with other cultural groups and have been involved in trading materials and objects (Lehtola 2004, 22). The Sámi have several material symbols that could set them apart from Norwegians. For example, they have a traditional outfit, the gákti, but with many mutual differences (Lehtola 2004). Every region, every town and sometimes even every family is recognizable by different colors, a different style or the quantity of ribbons (Lehtola 2004). The type of hat is also an important indicator to see where someone is from. During my research, I have been at a few events where I encountered many Sámi people in the traditional gákti and even after a bit of research, it is very hard to exactly say where someone is from. But when talking to one of my respondents, a Sámi women she could tell me exactly which dress is from which area. I want to stress that the Sámi are a very diverse group, with different types of livelihoods, histories and even languages. The typical image of Sámi being originally reindeer herders and nomads is not true (Webb 2006, 172). However, reindeer herding Sámi’s have become the symbol for being Sámi. It is therefore important to keep in mind, that nowadays this is only a small part of Sámi people that still have this way of living. A Sámi way of living has always been subject to change and external influences. Sámi lived in what are called siida’s: “a permanent socio-economic and political institution” (Lehtola 2004, 23). They lived like this until the 1500s, when states surrounding the Sámi area started to increase their influence and colonization spread (Lehtola 2004, 26). Besides this, a new livelihood occurred: the herding of reindeers. Changing to reindeer herding led to total change in the way of living (Lehtola 2004, 26). It meant that the pace of life would change according to the reindeer herds and in the end, migration of the family to take care of the herd. Nordic countries wanted to gain influence over the northern areas by using Christian missionaries, social control and colonization (Lehtola 2004, 30). These events have had severe impact on the culture of the Sámi. An invasion of the colonists into the siidas happened, destroying Sámi livelihood and the siida’s being taken over by farmers practicing agriculture. The reindeer Sámi in this case were not harmed (Lehtola 2004, 32). In a relatively short time the Sámi went from having special rights to borders being closed, forcing Sámi to choose a nation to live in. In 1751 the Strömstad Border Treaty was signed by Sweden and Norway which meant that Sámi reindeer herders would no longer need to pay taxes to both countries when they were moving over the border with their reindeer (Lehtola

15 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong

2004, 36). There was another important part to this treaty: the Lapp Codicil which contained the special rights of the Sámi (Lehtola 2004, 36). This seemed very positive, as this codicil entailed the following principles: “the conservation of the Lappish nation”, the right of the Sámi to move freely over the border, and the Sámi were freed from military service (Lehtola 2004, 36). It however, did not follow the borders of the siidas, some of them were therefore split in the middle. This sort of positivism was short lived when Sápmi, the Sámi area, was split in four parts by national borders (Lehtola 2004, 36). The siidas in this area became part of one of these states (Lehtola 2004, 36). New border agreements ignored the Strömstad Border Treaty, prohibiting Sámi to cross the borders. Not only reindeer Sámi were harmed with this, also Sámi whose livelihood depended on fishing for example, were prohibited to cross the borders (Lehtola 2004, 36). Borders were closed: first the Norwegian-Finnish border, later the Finnish-Swedish border. Sámi people, mainly reindeer Sámi who were particularly hardly affected by this, migrated to one of the countries, as they were forced to choose (Lehtola 2004, 37). The migrating of reindeers used to go from the Finnish inlands in the winters, to the arctic coasts in the summer. Because of the borders, it was no longer possible to travel these large distances (Lehtola 2004, 37). The fact that there was less space to travel with the reindeer led to the herds becoming smaller, which had as a consequence that reindeer herding often was not the number one livelihood anymore and people started to have more permanent settlements (Lehtola 2004, 38). Before discussing the assimilation period, it is important for the rest of this research to note the relation Sámi people had with objects. As traditionally nomads, Sámi had a different use of material culture than people have nowadays. Objects had to be practical as people were moving from one place to another. This is also the reason why art in the ‘western’ sense, such as paintings, did not play an important role for the Sámi until later (Lehtola 2004, 95). To quote a very influential artist Nils-Aslak Valeapää in Lehtola: “Sámi culture has never had art. It never had artists either. Traditionally, to the Sámi everything was life” (2004, 95). Synnove Persen, another very influential Sámi artist said the following in the 1980s: “Sámi artists differ from the artist of the majority populations in that they can not just sit in their studios producing works of art. They must participate in many activities. Sámi culture is at a stage where everyone needs to work to further Sámi politics, organizations,

16 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway and culture” (Lehtola 2004, 95). The relationship with objects naturally changed after less and less people were living as nomads. Also the periods of assimilation and cultural revitalization played a role in the use of objects and art.

2.2 History of assimilation

Sámi being forced to adjust to the majority is nothing new. It should be clear now that Sámi culture has been subject to change for a long time. However, after the drawing of the borders of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, and with dividing Sápmi in four parts, other developments happened that led to a breakdown in the traditional Sámi society (Lehtola 2004, 42). This next part will explain this and the period of assimilation more in- depth, this time focusing on the situation on the Norwegian side of the border. The siida was replaced by the Nordic municipal government system (Lehtola 2004, 42). This went together with the local government law of 1837, which can be seen as one of the first measures of Norwegianization as this law stated that to be a municipal representative one had to speak the Norwegian language (Lehtola 2004, 42). Sámi lost special rights and it became more beneficial to become a colonizer and take part in agriculture. In the mid 19th century, the hard Norwegianization period begun (Lehtola 2004, 44). Norwegianization was for a part founded on social Darwinist ideas, emphasizing the supposed superiority of European society who should ‘help’ ‘develop’ cultures that were not embracing these European values (Lehtola 2004, 44). This of course, was not only the case for the Sámi in Norway, but happened throughout the entire world during this period. The assimilation policies meant ‘Norwegianizing’ the non-Norwegians. Not only the Sámi were affected by this, also the Kvens, a Finnic ethnic minority living in the north of Norway were affected (Lehtola 2004, 44). Norway wanted to strengthen its influence in their northern regions, as these areas were strategically important in the relation with Russia (Lehtola 2004, 44). International relations therefore played an important role in these inward focused policies. There are a few events that are important in the Norwegianization period. In 1864 those who spoke Norwegian had priority in buying land from the state. During that time Sámi spoke mainly Sámi language, only a few people knew a bit of Norwegian (Lehtola 2004). In 1898, Sámi was prohibited at schools in Sápmi and in 1902 it was not allowed to

17 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong use any interpreters in administrative institutions anymore (Lehtola 2004, 44). Free access to land was only allowed for Norwegians. Being Norwegian was defined by the level of Norwegian someone spoke. With these policies, the state was forcing Sámi people to learn Norwegian. In the 20th century, these types of policies led to a stigmatization on Sámi language by the Norwegian society. Language had become a tool to find out if someone was Sámi. If someone spoke Sámi or even had a certain accent, these persons were stigmatized and subordinated. Speaking good Norwegian became very important, thus resulting to many Sámi parents in the 20th century teaching their children only Norwegian, as they did not want their children facing the same struggles as they had done (Eidheim 1971, 59). During the 20th century, even though the assimilation did not end, some small signs of cultural revitalization started to emerge. One important event happened on the 6th of February 1917 (Lehtola 2004, 48). This day marks the first general meeting of the Sámi in Trondheim, led by Elsa Laula, an important defender of Sámi rights. During this day, Sámi representatives from Sweden and Norway came together. Nowadays, the 6th of February is the national Sámi day. This year marked the 100th anniversary of this day and a large celebration was organized in Trondheim where many Sámi people came together and celebrated (Tråante 2017). The beginning of the 20th century marks the awakening of the Sámi (Lehtola 2004, 46). The Sámi saw their own livelihoods being weakened and realized that in order to make a stance against the ruling population, they had to unite. This started with small local organizations focusing more on general Sámi viewpoints (Lehtola 2004, 46). It cannot yet be seen as recognizing an overall Sámi identity, but it was the first step in organizing themselves and making a stance (Lehtola 2004, 46). The World War II ended this process as the Sámi were ordered to fight in the war. In Scandinavia, the enemy kept changing and there might have been instances in which Sámi from Norway and Finland have been facing each other in battle (Lehtola 2004, 46). In 1944, the Germans wanted to stop the Red Army by using the scorched earth tactic, meaning that Finnmark and a large part of Finnish Lapland was put on fire. The population was evacuated, and upon their return, only a few houses had survived (Lehtola 2004, 52). This tragic event has played an unprecedented important role in the assimilation of the Sámi after the World War II. As Lehtola puts it: “The destruction of centuries old settlements meant an interruption in material culture. That was accentuated by reconstruction. The roads brought large numbers of people to participate in the reconstruction of these areas. Sápmi began to

18 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway become greatly changed through the influence of outsiders, Finns and Norwegians” (2004, 52). The whole area was rebuilt in Norwegian style, thus accelerating the assimilation of the Sámi and leading them towards a life in a modern society (Lehtola 2004, 57). Even though the Sámi had faced many struggles and invasions on their cultural beliefs, way of living and spiritual life, the crisis they faced after World War II was different than before (Lehtola 2004, 57). With their houses and belongings burned and now living in a Norwegian type house, having to go to schools which were only thought in Norwegian, many Sámi adopted Norwegian values and started to lose their own background. However, entering what is in the western world often called a ‘modern’ society and lifestyle, a few advantages for creating a collective Sámi identity came along with it: “Improved communications and information networks have, together with pressure from outside, led to a growing feeling of solidarity among Sámi” (Lehtola 2004, 57). This was not a general feeling, happening linear and at the same time throughout entire Sápmi. It rather happened more in waves. Besides that, the postwar period is characterized by a global dialogue on human rights (Lehtola 2004, 58). Lehtola puts in the right words when saying: “In the atmosphere of changing ideology, ideas about the value of individuals and the rights of small peoples and minorities improved so that the United Nations added an important section to its Charter securing serious attention for the priority of aboriginal peoples’ rights” (2004, 58). This period of global attention for human rights sparked, to some extent, Sámi awakening. Even though Sámi awakening started to emerge in the postwar years, it still took a long time before the actual take-off of a collective Sámi identity. This was for a large part due to the Sámi being divided into four countries. Even though the Sámi have always been a heterogeneous group, with different languages, ways of living and culture, they were connected as one people (Lehtola 2004, 58). But now, the borders had created literally a distance between the Sámi, which led to a division in culture and language that did not exist before. This is evident in the creation of the first Sámi associations, that only focused on the country in which they were founded. Stigmatization was another reason why Sámi awakening took a few decades (Lehtola 2004, 62; Eidheim 1971). “Many Sámi, experiencing rapid modernization, had adopted the majority population’s ideals and even rejected their own Sáminess” (Lehtola 2004, 62). In a book written in the 1970s by Harald Eidheim, a Norwegian scholar, he discusses how ethnic

19 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong labels, such as ‘Lapp’ (how Sámi were called during that time) and Norwegians were shaped (1971, 51). He says: “The consistent though not public use of such labels [Sámi, Norwegian] indicates that an ethnic identity is a topic of importance in the relationships between persons carrying contrasting as well as similar identities” (Eidheim 1971, 51). He goes on discussing the symbols attached to an identity cleavage, with language being the most obvious one. To be clear, the situation for the coastal Sámi was different from the Sámi living in inner Finnmark, as in the places such as Karasjok and Kautokeino Sámi made up the majority of the population (Eidheim 1971, 51). Eidheim made a similar type of observation I have made almost 40 years later, that ‘signs of Sáminess’ are more visible in the inlands of Finnmark than more to the coast or to the south (1971, 52). With these signs, he and I mean clothing, objects such as the lavvu, drying reindeer skins, and using Sámi as a public language. When I visited Alta, on the coast of Finnmark, I did not observe any of these signs, even though presumably many Sámi live here. Eidheim finds out that most of the Sámi he speaks to are bothered that they do not fluently speak Norwegian as they have the feeling that their low standard of living (lower than that of the Norwegians in the fjord) are because they are seen as Sámi (1971, 55). He observes this also in their behavior towards Norwegians and other Sámi’s. The Sámi from the coast are emphasizing certain traits to nomad Sámi, such as the cleanliness of their houses (assumption made by Norwegians was that Sámi are unclean), the way they speak Norwegian (another assumption is that Sámi are stupid and cannot speak Norwegian) and how they decorate their houses (comfortable, just like Norwegians life) (Eidheim 1971, 56). Another very important observation, related to this, is that the Sámi in the fjords believe it is necessary and right that their children learn Norwegian, and no Sámi. To quote a respondent from Eidheim: “They shall not have the same handicap as we have had” (1971, 57). Not teaching Sámi children any Sámi languages was strengthened by the schooling system (Lehtola 2004, 62). Giving up one’s culture, boarding schools contributed to almost a complete generation not knowing any Sámi. In these schools the language that was spoken and taught was Norwegian, which for most children was a foreign language to them. Al these events described above led to cultural revitalization starting at the end of the 1960s which were mostly led by the first generation of Sámi who experienced the boarding schools (Lehtola 2004, 70). This movement also sparked many Sámi artist, who often were also part of this movement. The joik became an important symbol, but also

20 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway traditional handicrafts, duodji, experienced a revival. In Norway, Sámi organizations started to form, such as the Norway’s National Organization of Sámi (NSR) (Lehtola 2004, 70). This organization played an important role in changing attitudes of Norwegians towards Sámi’s. However, this did not mean that the relationship between Norwegians and Sámi had improved. Even in the 1970s this relationship remained problematic (Lehtola 2004, 70). The Alta conflict can be seen as a turning point for this. Before describing the Alta Conflict, that took place from 1968 till 1982, it is important to realize the special relation Sámi have with nature (Lehtola 2004, 72). Many Sámi depended on nature in their livelihoods and realized that nature needs time to recover. In the postwar reconstruction period, there was need for large quantities of natural resources. Especially the construction of large dams was very damaging to the natural environment (Lehtola 2004, 72). This happened throughout the whole of Sápmi, affecting the lives of many Sámi, especially reindeer herders, as large areas were flooded. The plan was to build another large dam in the Alta-Kautokeino river, but this was met with large resistance from Sámi people and environmentalists. For the Sámi, “the immediate issue was the right to decide on the use of their own areas” (Lehtola 2004, 72). During these protests, in which the protesters were met with violence from officials, the Sámi demanded to be recognized as an indigenous people and have an elected Sámi political body (Lehtola 2004, 72). Despite all the protests, the building of the dam continued and the power plant opened in 1987. However, the consequences of this large protest were positive for the Sámi. Especially the use of violence against the Sámi made that many Norwegians grew sympathy for them, but also fueled Sámi identity of many Sámi (Lehtola 2004, 72). The results for Sámi art was also large, as many artists participated in the protest and experienced a cultural awakening themselves. Materiality played an important role in the protests: Sámi were wearing gákti’s and protesters put up a lavvu in front of the Norwegian parliament. During this period, the Sámi flag was born. But the most striking results of all was that the Norwegian government changed its policy towards the Sámi (Lehtola 2004, 73). This started with a state committee on Sámi affairs that would monitor Sámi issues discussed in Norwegian parliament. One decade later, the Sámi were recognized as indigenous people and realized their own representative body (Lehtola 2004, 73). Looking back on the Sámi history described above, a few events have played a major role in the assimilation and awakening, subsequently on the formation of a Sámi identity.

21 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong

First of all, what is visible is that the global tendencies also have an effect on local or national policies. Finnmark being located next to the former Soviet Union, made (and to some extent still makes) it a strategic important region for Norway, which explains Norway’s desire to have a strong presence there. The schooling policies have shown how important language is in shaping or claiming an identity. The effects of this are now, in 2017, still visible, as the Norwegian Sámi president does not speak any Sámi, which led to high controversy (Måsø and Boine Verstad 2017). World War II has shown the importance of material culture for expressing one’s identity. Losing one’s material culture, such as personal belongings but also on a large scale the whole architecture of one region, has been a major contributor to accelerating the assimilation period. The postwar years meant a global dialogue on human rights, which were positive for the Sámi. However, it was still too early for these global tendencies to be put into direct action. But the first glances of Sámi awakening were visible.

2.3 Sámi politics nowadays

The political situation of the Sámi nowadays differs per country (Henriksen 1999). In Norway, Sweden and Finland the Sámi have a Sameting, a Sámi parliament which has advisory powers towards the governments. They are also able to choose their representatives, which is not possible for the Sámi in Russia. So, there is no overarching Sámi parliament, but it is active in the countries the Sámi live in. Even though there is no Sámi parliament for the Sámi living in the four countries, there is the Sámi Council, founded in 1956 as many Sámi thought it important to cooperate to promote Sámi rights, as one people (Henriksen 2004, 27). The representatives in the Sámi council are elected from the four countries every four years. The main goal of the Sámi is “to protect and develop the Saami people’s economic, cultural, linguistic and social rights and rights to livelihood” (Henriksen 2004, 27). The Sámi council also has an advisory role in the United Nations and can participate in events that are about indigenous peoples, which has been of great significance. The Sámi council also is a member of the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental forum that works on promoting interaction between Arctic states (2015). The Norwegian Sámi parliament, Sámediggi, is founded in 1989 and is seated in Karasjok (Henriksen 1999, 35). There are 39 elected representatives. Sámi part of the Sámi census of their district, are allowed to vote. The President of the Sámi parliament is Vibeke

22 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway

Larsen. The Sámediggi has achieved quite a few things (Lehtola 2004, 80). For example, they have worked on the situation of the Sea Sámi. People are positive about the Sámediggi, but there are of course also more skeptical voices. For example, there was doubt if the Sámediggi would indeed have actual powers or that “it had been founded only to assuage the conscience of Norwegian politicians” (Lehtola 2004, 82). The Norwegian King, first King Olaf and later King Harald, has been supportive of the Sámediggi (Lehtola 2004, 82). In the opening session of 1997, King Harald even gave a speech about Sámi rights and apologized for the assimilation policies of the Norwegian state (2004, 82).

2.4 Sámi struggles nowadays

There are still quite a few challenges for the Sámi, which I want to discuss in short here. These are the stigmatization from the non-Sámi community, language, the changing environment, land rights, and preserving cultural traditions and livelihoods. The Sámi are still facing stigmatization around being Sámi. Stigmatization means that “society established the means of categorizing persons and the complement of attributes felt to be ordinary and natural for members of each of these categories” (Goffman 1963, 2). Being Sámi is still not seen by every non-Sámi as equal. This is for example evident in news articles. Recently, Sámi people who wore the gákti on the national day of Norway on the 17th of May were shouted at and threatened (NRK 2017). Stigmatization is also evident in the story one of my respondent told me about how she found out at age 18 that she has a Sámi background. Even her father did not know that his father was Sámi. Because of the stigmatization, he abolished his Sámi heritage and did not tell or teach his children anything. When my respondent found out, she started to develop her own Sámi identity, but this was met with a lot of resistance from her family. If people would find out that she is Sámi, people would know that her whole family is Sámi. It was only after a while that her family became accepting of it and also started to engage more with this unknown family history. She explained to me that some people are still hesitant to speak out of their Sámi history as they are afraid that they will not be fully accepted. The events around the 17th of May unfortunately ascribe to the fact that some non-Sámi people are still not accepting Sámi people. Besides stigmatization from the non-Sámi community, one of my respondents also addressed the stigmatization from the Sámi community. As became clear during my

23 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong research, within the Sámi there are ideas about who are ‘real’ Sámi and who are ‘fake’ Sámi. These are not my words, but one of my respondents addressed this. According to her, supposedly ‘fake’ Sámi are people who have recently become aware of their Sámi background and have not had a ‘Sámi upbringing’, Therefore do not fully understand what it is to be Sámi, she said. In addition to this, a few of my respondents also talked about stigmatization from the Norwegian government. There is this believe that even though there are laws that give the Sámi rights, the implementation of these are deliberately at the expense of Sámi, as a respondent at the Karasjok Museum told me. Language remains an important issue. Many people born after the second World War do not speak any Sámi language, but they still are Sámi. The current Sámi president of the Norwegian Sámi parliament for example, does not speak any Sámi. Also in the official way of claiming that you are Sámi, language plays an important role. In Norway, one can claim to be Sámi when at least one of the parents or grandparents spoke Sámi language (Henriksen 1999, 23). Many Sámi people want their children to learn Sámi language in schools, but in parts of Norway there are not enough teachers available. As a respondent in Karasjok told me, in some schools the children therefore have Sámi classes through Skype and once in a few months they go for a school trip to Finnmark to be surrounded by the Sámi language, but this does not happen on large scale. For many Sámi children it is not possible to retrieve an education only in Sámi language. Other struggles for some Sámi people are the changing environment and land rights. Especially Sámi whose livelihood still depends on nature, for example reindeer herders and fishers, are experiencing negative results of the changing climate. Winters in Finnmark have changed. For me, one meter of snow was still much, but everyone told me that this was less snow than what they usually have. Another result is that the snow melts quicker but freezes again at night, so that there is an icy layer on top of the grass. Before, the reindeer would push away the snow with their noses to retrieve the grass, but because of the icy layer they do not reach grass. This has had as result that the reindeer have become significantly smaller in the past 50 years (The Guardian 2016). Another struggle some Sámi are facing is persevering traditional livelihoods and culture. Again, this is something that especially reindeer herders are dealing with. But also, coastal Sámi, even though due to the assimilation period, there is barely no ‘traditional’ lifestyle left anymore, such as traditional fishing (Pedersen 2012, 51).

24 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway

Chapter 3. Theoretical background

Throughout this research, there are a few concepts that recur and play an important part: identity and identity formation, material culture, museums and museum representation, and being indigenous. These are all concepts that stand on their own but are also conversing with each other. Some of them might seem straight forward, but as they can also have multiple meanings, it is necessary to discuss the possible definitions and the definition that is used in this research. These concepts are visible in the sub questions of this research: 1. How are material culture and identity of Sámi represented in the Volkenkunde Museum in Leiden and in museums in Norway? 2. How have the Sámi struggled for indigenous rights and what role did representations of identity and material culture in museums play in this struggle? 3. What role does Sámi material culture play during identity formation? 4. What effect had the Sámi cultural revitalization on Sámi identity and Sámi material culture? Why these questions have been chosen and the relation with the concepts, will be discussed more in-depth in the next chapter. I will start with discussing identity and identity formation, as these are concepts and phenomena that take place throughout the entire research: in museums, through material culture, at home, in society. Thereafter I will discuss material culture and the power it can have, followed by an account on museums and museum representation. Identity is important in understanding museum representation. Being indigenous is the last concept to discuss. As my research field are indigenous peoples, I feel I should mention what this could mean to people. Often, indigenous knowledge is the opposite of ‘western knowledge’ and I therefore feel it is important to discuss this before moving on with the rest of this research.

3.1 Identity and identity formation

In this part, I will discuss the theories behind the concept identity and what identity formation means. I will do this first by discussing it without the context of the Sámi, and later discus the formation of Sámi identity. I will also address the difference between individual

25 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong identity and collective identity, as this is an important part in of this research. Often people speak, including me, of the Sámi, as a group, and addressing the identity. Of course, it is not possible to talk about the Sámi identity, but perhaps the concept of collective identity can be used instead of making unfounded generalizations about the behavior of a group. Identity Who are you? How do other people see you? Important questions in the matter of identity. However explaining identity is not simply done by answering these questions. Identity has many meanings (Jenkins 1996, 5). Who you are or who you are perceived as, can have different implications. Can you go to another country easily? Are you threatened because you look different than your neighbor or the majority of the community? Are you forced to take on an identity that does not feel like yours? The concept identity plays an important role in this research as it is focused on identity representation and the formation of one’s identity. Identity and identity formation plays an important role in the history of the Sámi in Norway. The Sámi endured almost an era of assimilation. People were forced to adjust to another lifestyle and habits and learn another language. Besides that, the Sámi were treated as subordinate and many Sami people felt they were second-rate citizens (Eidheim 1971). This was followed by a period of cultural revitalization. Institutions such as museums have played a major role in representing a certain collective identity of the Sámi. Altogether, this not only had an impact on the image of Sámi people and on the collective identity, but also on individual identities of Sámi people. Simply put, one can say that the meaning of identity is the way someone feels different compared to other people (Lurhmann 2001, 532). Identity in this sense describes the difference between people. What sets someone apart from the other? This might have been the definition at one point, but anthropologists nowadays, see a different meaning (Luhrmann 2001, 532). Erik Erikson used to be the main theorist of identity and he saw identity as “a kind of consolidation of self, so that when someone acquired her identity, the way she interacted with the world – her ability to trust, to work, and to play – was recognized externally by others in a way that was consonant with her own internal understandings” (Luhrmann 2001, 532). One could ‘achieve’ identity. If you were recognized by others as the person you were feeling, then you had achieved your identity (Luhrmann 2001, 532).

26 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway

Jenkins gives the following definition of identity: “As a very basic starting point, identity is the human capacity … to know ‘who’s who’ (and hence ‘what’s what’). This involved knowing who we are, knowing who others are, them knowing who we are, us knowing who they think we are, and so on: a multi-dimensional classification or mapping of the human world and our places in it, as individuals and as members of collectivities” (1996, 5). It is a process. According to this description, external influences do play a role on identity, something that is overlooked by Erikson (Lurhmann 2001, 532). According to Lurhmann, three reasons make that describing identity is not as simple as Erikson describes. These are, according to Luhrmann: “the postmodern turn in anthropology and elsewhere in the social sciences; the recent focus on power and agency; and the emergence of what is called ‘identity politics’” (2001, 532). Even though all of these events suggest a different perspective on identity, it is possible to make a few generalizations. Basically, it is not possible to see identity as something unitary, as Erikson did (Lurhmann 2001, 532). Building on this identity is also not “a match between inner experience and outer acknowledgment” nor can it be seen as a “developmental achievement” (Lurhmann 2001, 532). I will now discuss these three influences in identity theory a bit more in depth. Due to postmodernism, identity can be perceived as a performance, something you present (Lurhmann 2001, 534). Following this, it is understandable that someone can have multiple identities, depending on the audience. The second influence in identity theory is power and agency: “Its relevance to identity theory lies in the way agency is understood to act within the constraints of external power” (Lurhmann 2001, 534). Holland, Lachiotte, Skinner and Cain in their book ‘Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds’ define identity as the following: “People tell others who they are, but even more important, they tell themselves and then try to act as though they are who they say they are. These self-understandings, especially those with strong emotional resonance for the teller, are what we refer to as identities” (1998, 3). They continue: “Identity is a concept that figuratively combines the intimate or personal world with the collective space of cultural forms and social relations” (Holland et all. 1998, 5). To me these definitions refer to the fact that identity is both personal, but has also to do with the world around you, the context. Important for the definition of identity are the terms agency and person (Luhrmann 2001, 532). According to Luhrmann ‘person’ “is an other-centered term. It evokes an individual’s understanding of the shared qualities of individuals like himself or herself – the

27 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong common qualities of those who have selves” (Luhrmann 2001, 533). As Janet Hoskins discusses, agency can mean the “capacity to act” (2006, 74). Hoskins has been influential with her work on how persons, identities, are interacting with objects. She describes this in her research about the Kodi in Indonesia: “What I discovered, quite to my surprise, was that I could not collect the histories of objects and the life histories of persons separately. People and the things they valued were so complexly intertwined they could not be disentangled” (Hoskins 1998, 2). People’s identities are subject to objects around them. Material culture and one’s identity, are therefore, as Hoskins said, intertwined. I will discuss this more in the part on material culture. Coming back to the point that identity must be seen in its own context, Geertz says that the Western conception of a person is a “rather peculiar idea within the context of the world’s cultures” (Geertz 1983, 59). He means that when looking at persons we have to look at them “within the framework of their own of what selfhood is” and therefore not placing them in our own, perhaps western context, but in their own context (Geertz 1983, 59). One remark I have to make here is about the self. Does the self even exist without objects? Is it not undeniable, especially in this research, that the self is shaped by objects surrounding someone? This will be addressed later in chapter six. The third influence in identity theory is cultural studies, and especially postcolonial studies and the study focused on identity politics. In the case of the Sámi, I feel it is only appropriate to discuss identity and colonialism. As the previous chapter explained Sámi history more thoroughly, the Sámi have experienced a period of assimilation and colonization. They were forced to give up their own habits and ideals. Albert Memmi has written the important book ‘The Colonizer and the Colonized’ which describes the process of the colonized wanting to be like to colonizer only realizing later that he can never be the same and comes into uprising (1965, 127). In the words of Luhrmann, if the colonized succeeds in this: “he remains still tortured, still living in a psyche defined by the colonizer, defined by what he is not” (2001, 534). “So goes the drama of the man who is a product and victim of colonialism. He almost never succeeds in corresponding with himself” (Memmi 1965, 127). Colonialism and assimilation have an extreme effect on one’s identity. As the story of Memmi describes, if often leads to wanting to be the same as the colonizer or the majority who have the power. In certain cases, this was the same in Norway, especially in the case of

28 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway the coastal Sámi (Eidheim 1971). This can have the consequence that the subordinate sees themselves in the way the superior does (Lurhmann 2001, 534). “Identity politics takes this central relationship between a dominant group and a subordinate group, an us and a them, and makes theories out of the attempts to change it” (Lurhmann 2001, 534). Identity politics has played a very important role in Sámi history, both during the assimilation period as during the cultural revitalization, during which Sámi started to use identity politics for their own gain (Olsen 2004). As Jenkins says: “As a collective identity that may have a massive presence in the experience of individuals, ethnicity – including for the moment, ‘race’ – is often an important and early dimension of self-identification” (1996, 87). Bhabha, an important scholar on identity politics, in the words of Lurhmann: “suggests that the post- colonial subject, the marginal subject, is someone who feels that her capacity for self- declaration has been taken from her repeatedly through a long history in which she has been forced to conform to the dominant culture’s prejudices and biases” (Luhrmann 2001, 535; Bhabha 1990). This is something that I have witnessed during my fieldwork when talking to some of my respondents. Every action from the Norwegian government is weighted against years of assimilation. I believe it is therefore that under my respondents there is still a lot of distrust to the Norwegian government and society for that matter, as the feeling of full self-declaration, despite all the rights that have been given to the Sámi, is not fully met due to doubtful implementation of those rights. Collective identity In this research, it is important to discuss if there is a difference between collective and individual identity. I believe there is. When I am talking about a culture, I am talking about the collective identity of a group, which is different from one’s own individual identity (Polletta and Jasper 2001). I want to stress that I do not want to generalize stereotypes and overlook individual identities, but there are certain symbols that are ascribed to a certain collective identity. This has also deliberately been done by both Norwegian as Sámi museum (Webb 2006). Not every scholar believes that there is a difference between collective and individual identity (Jenkins 1996, 37). According to Jenkins, in some respects they can be understood as similar to each other except from the fact that individual identity is often perceived as emphasizing difference and collective identity as emphasizing similarities (Jenkins 1996, 38). For me, individual and collective identity are very different, especially in the case of the Sámi. I see collective identity being formed, often by people not involved in

29 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong the group, who have a certain incentive to frame a group in a certain way. In the case of Norway, it was necessary for the Norwegianization to make sure that all the Sámi were seen as backwards people (Eidheim 1971). During the cultural revitalization, Sámi political actors and even museums, framed the Sámi collective in a certain way to make the movement larger and get support. It was important that people would feel like they were a part of this ‘group’. It is clear that the Sámi are a heterogeneous group, made up of individuals all with their own identities, of which some also feel connected to this collective identity and some do not. As we will see further in this research, museums can play a role in representing this collective identity. Polletta and Jasper define collective identity as “an individual’s cognitive, moral, and emotional connections with a broader community, category, practice, or institution” which is often indicated through the traditions of the group (2001, 285). These collective identities “are expressed in cultural materials – names, narratives, symbols, verbal styles, rituals, clothing, and so on – but not all cultural materials express collective identities” (Polletta and Japser 2001, 285). I think this latter point is very important, especially in the case of the Sámi, as there is a more dominant collective identity that only fits a limited amount of people, namely reindeer herding Sámi (Webb 2006, 172). Not ascribing to a collective identity does not mean that one is not Sámi. It just means that that person does not connects to that particular community. Another important point that is made by Polletta and Jasper is that this collective identity can also be “constructed by outsiders” (2001, 285). I would like to argue that the formation of a collective identity has happened on different levels. First of all in museums. Webb says the following about this: “Narratives woven in the earlier Sámi museums produced a simple, instantly recognizable and necessarily idealized ‘Sámi-ness’, as far from the majority population as possible in order for it to be recognizable” (2006, 180). Here she talks about Sámi museums founded by Sámi people who established a collective identity for their own political agenda, but I believe Norwegian museums also played a role (Webb 2006, 178). As Webb says: “Museums have had a profound effect on the indigenous culture, but by gaining control of the medium, Sámi have used it to their own ends” (2006, 178). For example, the museum in Karasjok was one of the first to receive state funding as this museum was not seen as being political. However, “On both a conceptual and practical level, it [the museum] provided a physical location and a focus from which the political movement

30 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway could organize” (Webb 2006, 178). Secondly, I argue that society, the Norwegian government and the own political movement of the Sámi has influence on the formation of collective identity. In this research, I do not want to discuss how a collective identity formation exactly takes place, but I do want to make clear that all these levels have influence on shaping identity. The identity formation of Sámi people is largely influenced by 100 years of harsh assimilation policies followed by a period of cultural revitalization. Harald Eidheim, a Norwegian social anthropologist, is an example of a scholar who has written a great deal on Sámi identity and identity formation in the 1970s and 80s. Even though this is a few decades back, his books and articles are still very interesting to read for understanding the current situation of the Sámi. Perhaps precisely because they are from the previous century, written during the assimilation and Norwegianization period. In his book ‘Aspects of the Lappish Minority System’ he writes about ethnic identity being a social stigma by looking at his case of the Sámi in West Finnmark (Eidheim 1971, 50-51). He has taken West Finnmark and the coastal Sámi as an example to look at how an identity develops when there is a social stigma. The coastal Sámi live in an area where also Norwegians live, in contrast to the Sámi living in inland Finnmark where they make up 90% of the population (Eidheim 1971, 51). Eidheim discovers through conversations with the coastal Sámi that they want to be as ‘Norwegian’ as possible, because by ‘being Norwegian’ they have more opportunities than what they would have if they were seen as Sámi (1971, 54-55).

3.2 Material culture and its power

Every day we use objects, see objects, buy objects. Objects tell a story. For a long time “Material culture was the manifestation of other cultures, other worlds, and was sufficient alone to capture the interest and imagination of a public audience” (Haas 1996, 7). Often anthropological or ethnographic museums were the warehouses of these objects. Material culture is a term that arrived in the 20th century within archeology and cultural anthropology and the study of it grew during the 1980s and 90s (Appadurai 1986; Hicks and Beaudry 2010, 25; Ter Keurs 2011). In 1996, the ‘Journal of Material Culture’ was first published, indicating the importance of this studies (Tilley 2006, 1).

31 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong

There are discomforts with the idea of material culture that can be identified. Firstly, the idea of culture: can we speak of a culture? Secondly, when we speak of ‘material’ we then also have the ‘immaterial’. The question arises if it then is useful to speak of material culture as we also categorize immaterial then. And thirdly, should we place these two, perhaps somewhat problematic terms of material and culture, together? (Hicks and Beaudry 2010, 26-27). Tilley also confirms this: “Yet the ‘material’ and the ‘culture’ are commonly regarded as fundamentally opposed” (2006, 1). Having an important role in the disciplines of archeology and cultural anthropology, material cultural studies however is interdisciplinary (Miller 2010, 2; Tilley 2006, 1). “This field of study centers on the idea that materiality is an integral dimension of culture, and that there are dimensions of social existence that cannot be fully understood without it” (Tilley 2006, 1). Material culture was often seen as something that reflects a certain culture, in the sense that it thought us about a certain culture (Hicks and Beaudry 2010, 354). Miller in his book ‘Stuff’ does not give a definition of stuff and material culture, as he sees it as a hopeless task to define what stuff is and what is not (2010, 1). He argues that objects actually do not represent us, but that they create us. The dominant theory of materialism seems to be that objects are symbols of representation (Miller 2010, 12). Especially clothing would be seen as an object that is used to show a certain message, for example where you are from. Miller argues that clothes are nothing more than things without a real meaning and therefore wonders “what and where is this self that the clothes represent?” (2010, 13). If you would get rid of all the clothes, what would you be left with? According to Miller you would not be left with your true inner self. He therefore thinks that “the clothes were not superficial, they actually were what made us what we think we are” (Miller 2010, 13). Stuff, in this case clothes, make us something, instead of we using stuff to represent our selves. The term function plays an important role in the study of material objects as it could explain the stuff we have and why we have it (Miller 2010, 44). However, when looking at the earlier example of clothing, we can see straight away that people do not always chose the most functional. Of course, in the first place we wear clothes to keep us warm. Miller for example asks if a function can be showing a gender? Wearing a skirt instead of trousers on a worksite, is that more functional? (Miller 2010, 46-47). It is evident that functionality is not the main role of objects.

32 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway

Another important term I already touched upon during the part on identity, is agency. Agency is also important regarding material culture, and might be used to connect identity and objects together, as Hoskins showed earlier (1998, 6). Alfred Gell is an important scholar regarding agency and his work can be used to explain this term more in-depth (1998). He has written the book ‘Art and Agency’, in which he argues how art can be used as an instrument to influence others (Gell 1998). Objects are more than symbols. They are, according to Gell, systems of actions (1998, 5). He talks about artworks not in the aesthetic sense, but about art as social agents: “persons or ‘social agents’ are … substituted for by art objects” (Gell 1998, 5). Gell defines agency as persons and things that are “seen as initiating causal sequences of a particular type, that is, events caused by acts of mind or will or intention, rather than the mere concatenation of physical events” (1998, 16). Agent then “initiate ‘actions’ which are ‘caused’ by themselves, by their intentions, not by the physical laws of the cosmos” (Gell 1998, 16). I believe this latter point is the most important in understanding the agency of objects. Objects hold some sort of power with which they can influence people. Pierre Bourdieu is another important name in the study of material culture (Bourdieu 1972; Miller 2010, 51; Jenkins 1992). Miller follows the argument of Bourdieu in saying that becoming part of society, as an individual, you will not learn this by getting an education, but because people are instilled in habits of society through the way they interact with each other during everyday traditions and practices (Miller 2010, 52-53). Miller continues: “In Bourdieu’s account the key operator in making us characteristic of our own society is stuff” (2010, 52). Bourdieu “argues that what, in industrial societies, we now tend to inculcate through formal education happens to children born in to Kabyle society [a North African Berber community] through a process of habituation with the order of the things around them” (Miller 2010, 52-53). Miller continues: “By learning to interact with a whole slew of different material cultures, an individual grows up assuming the norms that we call culture” and these things are learned through the everyday routines (Miller 2010, 53). If we follow this theory is it then possible to argue that stuff does play an important role in identity formation? As by interacting with the material culture, the objects around us, we learn norms of a culture. For example, a child of a reindeer herder, growing up with objects around him that are related to reindeer herding would identify as such much easier than someone who is not around the practices of reindeer herding. It will become visible in the

33 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong case of the Sámi that this is an interesting case as people are finding out that they have a Sámi background at a later age. They have not grown up with Sámi objects around them, and have not learned which gákti belongs to the area they live in. They are exploring this at a different stage in their lives. As the last paragraphs have made clear, there is much more to objects than just their being. Whether you believe we use objects to represent ourselves, or the other way around as Miller argues, it has become clear that objects have an important role. The next part discusses the institutions that show and display objects and use them to represent people and cultures: museums.

3.3 Museums and museum representation

Museums have been the historical voice of anthropology (Haas 1996, 1). It was and in some cases is a place where the ‘us’ and ‘them’ met: “’Us’ includes both the viewer and the museums in implicit collaboration, while ‘them’ consists of the Native people represented across the glass in exhibits and on the shelves of endless storerooms” (Haas 1996, 8). However, from both sides this has been challenged and museums are facing difficulties around the topic of representation of indigenous peoples. According to Haas: “The dialectic in the case of museums is between their role as a voice for anthropology in public learning and the movement to cede decision-making power to Native peoples represented in collections, exhibits and programs” (1996, 1). Ethnographic museums have faced criticism that they are representing a non-Western culture looked through with Western scientific glasses (Haas 1996, 1; Lien and Nielssen 2011,603). Museums have power in their decisions of what they collect, what will be placed in the depots and what in the museum, and what kind of exhibits will be made. This power lies in the fact that museums than decided how cultures are being portrayed for an audience to be witnessed (Haas 1996, 1). Especially in a post-colonial period, this so-called power is especially questionable as indigenous people are taking back power, not only legally and ethically, but also about material heritage and how this is displayed in museums. However, there is development visible, that of ingenious curatorial practices (Lien and Nielssen 2011, 604; Simpson 2001). A challenge for museums lies “In relinquishing power and authority in representing cultural diversity” to “become common meeting grounds for all cultures and forums for

34 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway bringing cross-cultural understanding to a wide public audience” (Haas 1996, 1). This, however, is not that simple as there are many interpretations of this. Who should then manage museums? How should representation take place? And perhaps most important, what is a museum? This are all questions that do not have a universal answer. Besides that “History told tends to belong to the dominant forces within a society, while the history of the minor forces tends to be defined in relation to dominant forces” (Lien and Nielssen 2011, 613). However, there are also trends that incorporate “descendants of the people and communities from whom these collections originally came” (Van Broekhoven, Buijs and Hovens 2011, 1). For example, indigenous people were invited to discuss topics such as cultural heritage and material culture (Van Broekhoven, Buijs and Hovens 2011, 7). In my conversations with Cunera Buijs she explained co-curating to me, which means that exhibitions are created in cooperation with indigenous people. Unfortunately, funding can be a problem in organizing this, as the will to do so is present. As discussed in Chapter five, Sámi museums, run by Sámi people, are also facing criticism, as some of them are seen to copy conventional ethnographic displays without adding something extra such as a chronology or a different narrative (Lien and Nielssen 2011, 613). As my fieldwork in several Sámi museums will show, some exhibitions portray a ‘traditional’ image of Sámi people, the past, without focusing on the story of struggles they faced. Moira McLaughlin in her work about the representation of Native Canadians in museums, actually believes that showing this past makes the basis of the contemporary life (Lien and Nielssen 2011; McLaughlin 1999). The fact that some images can be seen as stereotypes, is not that negative according to her (McLaughlin 1999, 238). For example, during my visits in some museums I have seen several, what can be seen as, stereotypical Sámi images, such as reindeer herders, using a sled for transportation, living in a tent and cooking on a fire. However, in the words of Lien and Nielssen: “stereotypes may also be re- appropriated, turned into irony or incorporated into experimental artistic journeys” (2011, 614). In Chapter five I will discuss if I believe this is the case in the museums I have visited. There are a few scholars who have written important books and articles in the study of museums, such as James Clifford and Michael Ames (Clifford 1988, 1997; Ames 1986, 1991). Let us get back to the question of what a museum actually is. It is important to ask this question as times have changed and “museum curators are no longer automatically

35 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong perceived as the unassailable keepers of knowledge about their collections; museums are no longer simply revered as spaces promoting knowledge and enlightenment, the automatic resting place for historic and culturally important ethnographic objects” (Lidchi 2013, 153). A museum was often seen as some sort of warehouse of objects of ancient and far away cultures, to save a piece of the past. But there are other views as well. Clifford in ‘Museums as contact zones’ discusses how the Portland Art museum became a meeting place for the museum staff and the native people (1997, 189). The museum offered a space where there was interaction between different cultures: “When museums are seen as contact zones, their organizing structure as a collection becomes an ongoing historical, political, moral relationship – a power-charged set of exchanges, of push and pull” (Clifford 1997, 192). A two way relationship can be created, in which both the museum and the cultures being shown are benefitting. However, Clifford also sees that “Community pressures have always been part of institutional, public life” (1997, 209). And he also sees that it is not an easy task to make a museum a contact zone: “The solution is inevitably contingent and political: a matter of mobilized power, of negotiation, of representation constrained by specific audiences” which is not easy to achieve, especially with pressures such as the public life, represented cultures and financial donors (1997, 209). It perhaps therefore can be seen as a goal that can be followed, as achieving this in a short time span is not possible. It is already evident that museums are changing: “museums are now undergoing a radical change in the way that they function and in their relationships with the cultures represented in the collections; a change which reflects shifts in the relationships between dominant western cultures and those of indigenous, minority, and suppressed cultures everywhere” (Simpson 2001, 1). I believe that this is also evident in for example the Tromsø Museum’s exhibition ‘Sápmi – becoming a nation’. More about this in Chapter five.

3.4 Being indigenous

In a study of indigenous peoples, I do feel it is important to address the concept indigeneity, being indigenous. Clifford who I also mentioned in the context of museums as contact zones, is the author of the trilogy starting with ‘The predicament of Culture’ (1988), followed by ‘Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late 20th Century’ (1997) and the recent

36 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway

‘Returns: Becoming Indigenous in the Twenty-First Century’ (2013), has some interesting views on indigeneity. Clifford is known for his historical views on anthropology, and in his last book discusses what being indigenous means in a process of transformation (2013). Clifford starts his book with a brief account on history, arguing that he has “come to feel historical” and with this placing his book in the context of the 21st century (2013, 2). In Latin indigenous means “born or produced from within” which could refer the meaning of being the first inhabitants (Clifford 2013, 13). Clifford makes an interesting observation about the concept: “paradoxically, this word featuring extreme localism has come to denote a global array” (2013, 14). Indigeneity and the role of space is an interesting thought. Meaning that being indigenous is often attached to a territory, even though these people might not live on this original territory anymore. A global array as the discussion about being indigenous has transcendent to the global sphere. In the case of the Sámi, they originate from an area before borders were drawn (Lehtola 2004). The creation of nation states has had a devastating effect on the conservation of Sámi culture (Lehtola 2004). In Returns Clifford discusses ‘becoming’ in the context of globalization, capitalism and power shifts (2013, 7). He says: “I argue for an ethnographic and historical realism – recognizing that ideas of history and the real are currently contested and also inventively translated in power-charged sites from land-claims courtrooms to museums and universities” (2013, 7). He uses three narratives that have played an important role in the previous decades: decolonization, globalization and indigenous becoming (Clifford 2013, 8). Clifford says the following about the term indigenous: it “typically refers to societies that are relatively small-scale, people who sustain deep connections with a place” (Clifford 2013, 15). Clifford explains that the idea used to be that indigenous people would ‘disappear’ in Western society, for example through assimilation (Clifford 2013, 7). And for some part this was the case: native people have been killed and languages have been forgotten. But, as Clifford notes, against the odds, many indigenous people also survived (2013, 7). During the 1980s and 1990s there was an emergence of what Clifford calls indigenous cultural politics (2013, 15). Using the term indigenous, might imply a dichotomy of indigenous and western. Olsen in Drugge does not believe that this dichotomy is that clear (2016, 31). He says: “The term Indigenous is a political term as well as a label of identity, and tends to vary according to social, historical and political context. The term ‘Western’ is surely a term understood in

37 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong relation to something else” (Olsen in Drugge 2016, 31). Especially in the case of the Sámi in Norway, it is not always that clear how to distinguish between Sámi and Norwegian. So even though it might seem straight forward to use the term indigenous, for example in calling certain communities indigenous, according to Bjørn Ola Tafjord we have to be careful with this: “We also confuse a rather new-found identity that has also become an ideological concept, and a political and legal tool, with an analytical category” (Tafjord 2012, 11).

38 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway

Chapter 4. Methods

4.1 Operationalization

In this chapter I will discuss the methods that have been used, the reason why I choose these, the expectations I had before using them and I will evaluate them. The methods I planned on using were collection-based research, semi-structured interviews in combination with showing photographs of Sámi objects, and (participating) observations. Before deciding which methods to use, I started with the research question and the sub questions, where after I started with the operationalization. The research question is: How has material culture and identity representation in museums influenced the struggle for more rights and identity formation of Sámi in Northern Norway? I came up with four sub questions, each addressing a part of the main question. The first one is: How are material culture and identity of Sámi represented in the Volkenkunde Museum in Leiden and in museums in Norway? To be precise, these museums in Norway are the Tromsø Museum, the Alta museum, the Karasjok Museum, the Kautokeino Museum, and the North Norwegian Art museum. The latter one is an art museum and differs in many ways from the other museums which are ethnographic. Another difference is that some are official Sámi museums and others are Norwegian museums. The second sub question touches upon the struggles the Sámi have faced and are facing in relation to museum representation: How have the Sámi struggled for indigenous rights and what role did representations of identity and material culture in museums play in this struggle? From here I moved to the question: What role does Sámi material culture plays during identity formation? I want to know how objects were used during the period of cultural revitalization, but also nowadays. Does materiality, for example clothing, still play an important role in the identity formation? The last sub question turns this around: What effect had the Sámi cultural revitalization on Sámi identity and Sámi material culture? With this question, I wanted to discover if cultural revitalization has had an impact on Sámi material culture or on the use of it. This question is very broad, and could be a research on its own, but it is something I thought I would encounter during my research. From the research question and the sub questions, I moved to concepts that are important, which have been discussed and defined when necessary in chapter three. I will

39 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong now briefly discuss them in relation to the methods chosen. The first concept, identity, will be used to understand how the Sámi as an indigenous people is portrayed, by themselves and institutions such as museums and the Norwegian government. This leads to representation, another very important concept in this research. This concept helps in understanding how the Sámi identity and history are portrayed by these institutions. Ames describes such institutions such as museums and art galleries showcasing indigenous art and artifacts as systems of representations (1991, 8). The concept of representation will mainly be used during the fieldwork at museums displaying Sámi art and artifacts and is important in understanding what the story is the museums want to tell and how the Sámi are being portrayed. Also beyond the museums it is an important subject, referring to other holders of power, such as the Norwegian government who is also engaged in an act of representation, for example in their law making. Of course, materiality is another crucial concept in this study. It however means more than just objects. It includes different objects with different meanings, such as art or artifacts, objects that are still being used on a daily basis and objects that can only be found in museums (Barnard and Spencer 2012, 453). These three are not the only important concepts in this research but they form the core of this research. The concepts identity, representation and materiality all relate to each other in this research. The shift in Sámi identity might have also led to a shift in representation of Sámi identity in museums and in the use of material objects. Besides that, the objects in museums are used to represent a certain Sámi identity. Identity is the changing factor, most likely due to the cultural revitalization period. This, in change, has had effect on Sámi material culture. The analysis of representation of Sámi identity in museums through material objects is important as it plays a role on how objects are interpreted by their audiences. This is important as it contributes to the image of Sámi people. Materiality as a concept concerns the objects through which identity is represented and constructed.

4.2 Methodology

In this research, mixed methods have been applied, which means combining different types of research methods to get the best possible results. They are all qualitative in nature. As mentioned before, the research methods are collection-based research, semi-structured interviews and observations.

40 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway

Collection-based research took place at the Museum Volkenkunde. The museum has a collection of approximately 500 Sámi cultural objects such as clothing and jewelry, many small household objects such as a sewing kit, a Sámi flag, and prints. Because this research is in cooperation with Museum Volkenkunde, I have access to the Museum´s database of the collection. This part of the research was not subject to that much external influences as I already had access to the Museum Collection computer program and had a small understanding how to use it. However, I assumed the system would provide me with more information on the original location and year of the object. The date was often a guessed period, for example 1950 till 1970, which is not that accurate at all. For the location, this was often also the case. The system often stated Finnish Lapland or Norwegian Lapland, instead of being more precisely, for example in naming a town. A collection-based research means that the objects under study are artifacts. My first step in doing this, was to get a general overview of the collection to find out what kind of items the museum holds. I did this by making an excel sheet of most of the items and noting the type of item, material, date and place. I was hoping to make some sort of a time line, placing the items in chronological order. But as the date was often a period of a few decades, I found this hard to do as it would not provide me with accurate results. Jules Prown discusses methods that can be used to study material culture and divides them in two parts: the internal evidence and the external evidence. With studying the Sámi collections, the internal evidence will be studied first. This is what is observable in the object (1982, 7). This exists of three stages: description (what can be observed), deduction (derived from interaction between the object and perceiver) and speculation: “framing hypotheses and questions which lead out from the object to external evidence for testing and resolution” (1982, 7). During the analyzation of the objects, I kept topics such as protests and identity formation in mind. Certain items had a definite role during periods of struggle and protests, such as the three protests posters addressing the Alta-Kautokeino conflict. Also according to the descriptions alongside the objects, many clothing items were used to express one’s identity. This collection-based research therefore started with the entire collection and from there identified more specific items that play an important part in this research. The interview part of this research took place during the fieldwork in Norway. I planned on doing semi-structured interviews. Most of the interviews I did, where indeed

41 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong semi-structured. I prepared a few questions beforehand but kept this to a bare minimum as I experienced the interviews went better when I kept the questions very open. As I sometimes did not know exactly who I would be interviewing, I did not want to prepare to much specific questions. I wanted to interview people working at the museums in Tromsø, Alta, Karasjok and Kautokeino. I contacted all the museums before I went to Norway, so I already had a few interviews lined up. It proved to be not that difficult to get in touch with the people working here, and all the people I spoke to were very enthusiastic about my research. They were often very open in welcoming me in their museums and telling me about the collections. I also planned on interviewing as many Sámi people as possible. This proved to be a lot more difficult than interviewing people at museums and was also difficult to arrange before my arrival. Even though I was always friendly greeted, people were not that willing in having a conversation. Thereby, I spent a limited time in the field and I did not have enough time to build a relation with people and make them trust me more. It was very hard to arrange official interviews, but I managed by using the snowballing method to interview a few people. By explaining my research to as many people as possible and asking them if they knew any people that would be interested in cooperating, I managed to arrange a few interviews. Making small talk, however, was a lot easier to do. This, from time to time in the field, made me feel insecure as I had planned on doing as much official sit-down interviews. During the writing stage of this thesis, these casual conversations actually proved to be very helpful as well. However, during the official interviews I felt there was more room for me to ask specific and personal questions. It was easier for me to take charge during these interviews, whilst during casual conversations the person I was talking to was more in charge as they would tell me things I did not ask about. They seemed to be more comfortable in this role. In the end however, the official interviews give a more direct answer to my research question, but the casual conversations have given me a more general understanding of relations between Sámi and Norwegians. I did not use the photos in every interview. I only used it during interviews with people working at one of the museums. It was very interesting when one of the respondents had a Sámi background because this way they could tell me so much about the objects I showed them. In some cases, even more than the Museum Volkenkunde knows about the objects. I received a lot of interesting data from the times I used the photos, which has made

42 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway this technique of interviewing very successful. One down sight might be that I sometimes was not exactly sure how to incorporate the photos in the interview. This is one of the reasons why I did use it when interviewing staff at museums, as the focus of these interviews lay more on objects. When interviewing other people with a Sámi background, the focus often lay more on their personal lives and I felt uncomfortable to change the flow of the interview by showing the pictures. As mentioned before, the interviews were semi-structured. During the analysis stage however, I noticed one downside of this. It is almost impossible to make comparisons between the interviews as not the same questions were asked at every interview. This does not necessarily have to be a downside, but it made me think about how the present the data as I am used to present data in making comparisons. Another part of my research were observations. Before going into the field, I wanted to find a Sámi family with whom I could stay for a few days and would allow me to observe them and participate in their everyday life. I tried to do this through my network and that of Cunera Buijs. I also tried the online platform Couch Surfing which allows you to stay with people abroad, but even through this platform it was not possible to find a family. Besides that, I did not want to intrude and therefor did not push that hard. The reason I was planning on doing this type of observing was that I wanted to see how material objects are being used in an everyday setting. It could be possible that ‘traditional’ Sámi items, displayed in museums are still being used. Even though I did not manage to do this form of observing, observation did play an important role during the fieldwork. For example, during the celebrations of the Sámi national day at the town hall in Tromsø, observation was important. There were many items, objects and clothing for me to see. These observations have provided me with a lot of data on Sámi interacting with each other and their clothing. During my trip through Finnmark, walking through the small towns of Karasjok and Kautokeino, observing my surroundings did teach me a lot about life in these towns. By observing my surroundings, I managed to see many signs of ‘Sáminess’, such as drying reindeer skins in the backyard and a painting of the Sámi flag on a barn. It also made the differences between the locations I have been to more visible. For example, in Tromsø I barely saw any signs objects that are considered to be typical Sámi, whilst in Alta I saw a few more. But when arriving in Karasjok and Kautokeino, I saw many ‘typical’ Sámi items. Even

43 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong though my initial plans of observing a Sámi family did not work out, observations have contributed a large part to the collected data.

4.3 Ethical considerations and the position of the researcher in the field

The important ethical considerations of this research are focused around the study of indigenous people and the place of the researcher in the field. A question I asked myself before entering the field was how can I, as a non-indigenous western researcher, research an indigenous culture without making assumptions about it? On this topic, recently a book has been published by the Umeå University by Anne-Lill Drugge called ‘Ethics in Indigenous Research’ (2016). This is not the first book that discusses ethics in indigenous research, but what is special about it that it is one of the first books that takes the case of the Sámi as an example. For some time, I was struggling with how the be a non-indigenous researcher researching indigenous people. I was worried I would not realize when I was making assumptions. Besides that, I did not want to barge into the field and intrude in people’s lives. Even though I do have some knowledge about Sámi history, I am not the one who has experienced it. I wanted to be very cautious in making any assumptions and decided that my research tactic would be letting people guide me in their stories and take on an observing role instead of imposing questions. This was also important for me in my decision on which research methods to use. Of course, interviews would provide me with very usable data for this research, but I did not want to have a role as interviewer all the time. I therefore decided to use photos in my research, to avoid making any assumptions about material culture. The only influence on this was that I decided which pictures I would place in the folder and show to my respondents. As discussed above, I found this method working very well. In any research in which other people can be influenced by your actions, ethics is important. But also researching indigenous people has been an important topic in the work on research ethics (Drugge 2016, 45). The concern is that researchers go in and out of the field, taking a lot back home but not giving anything back in return (Drugge 2016, 45). In some countries where indigenous research is often practiced, special rules and even review boards have been implemented to control the ethics of researching indigenous people

44 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway

(Drugge 2016). Anne-Lill Drugge discusses the ethical considerations and starts her book with the following: “Ethics in research related to Indigenous peoples has, over recent decades, been increasingly discussed in a global context. Decolonizing theories and methods have gained legitimacy and prestige, and Indigenous scholarship has challenged mainstream research by adding novel perspectives and critical standpoints that encourage researchers of all origins to reflect upon their own positions within the colonial academic and social structures in which they work” (2016, 9). There are a few points that must be taken into consideration during indigenous research: the decolonization of research; the role of a non- indigenous western researcher and the danger of making generalizations. The decolonization of research in indigenous studies has become an important subject. As Olsen explains it in Drugge: “Decolonization means the critical exploration of the foundations and approaches of research in order to find out how or if it can be said to be marked by a colonialist bias” (2016, 29). Olsen cites Linda Tuhiwai Smith, a Maori scholar who has written a lot on decolonizing research: “Doing research in Indigenous studies clearly has its dangerous implications, according to Smith. It puts the scholar – in particular the non- Indigenous scholar – in a location where ethical guidelines are (potentially) transgressed already at the beginning. As research has been part of colonization, carrying stereotypes of primitivism and Orientalism and using the knowledge and ideas of Indigenous people as resources, it surely still needs to be faced with suspicion and a critical perspective” (Drugge 2016, 29). This addresses the second point, that of non-indigenous researcher in the field. I feel that it is my role to be aware of these risks and, as explained before, be guided and not be the guide. The point on generalizations is about the following: “reminding the reader that individual Indigenous voices do not automatically echo the Voice of the group” (Drugge 2016, 11). Especially during this research with a limited number of respondents, it is obvious that generalizations cannot be made. But besides that, even though the Sámi is often seen as one group, I should try to restrain myself as much as possible for generalizing about a group. I am therefore emphasizing the diversity of Sámi people, as I feel that this is often underexposed and one speaks of Sámi people as the Sámi people as everyone have the same ideas, morals and traditions. Besides that, decolonization of research adds an extra dimension.

45 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong

Chapter 5. Museums, representation and identity

This chapter will describe and partly analyze the visits I made to museums with Sámi collections. I will start with Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden. After that the distinction between national and Sámi museums will be explained. Thereafter, I will describe my visits to the museums in Norway, supplemented with pictures of the collection that I have made during my research.

5.1 Museum Volkenkunde

The Museum Volkenkunde is home to a collection of approximately 500 Sámi related objects. A small part of these objects is displayed at the department with items from North- America and the arctic. A part of the collection is also visible on the website of the museum (Wereldculturen 2017). The part with Sámi objects is a small section. It is showed in a low, glass showcase with a few higher showcases to display clothing. These low glass showcases have been chosen because they resemble ice, fitting for the polar areas. The lights are dimmed and you hear music from the Inuit and sounds of dogs barking. On one large wall, a projection of images of Greenland is shown. The Sámi exhibition is only a small area of this department. Small items are displayed in the low showcases and a few items, such as Sámi traditional clothing, is displayed in a long standing showcase. A few items are displayed on top of the showcases, such as a sled. Items that stand out, besides the traditional clothing and the sled, are a colorful crib which has been made for the museum. I used the Museum System to research the Sámi items. In this system, all the items of the museum are registered. This gave me a very long list. To organize this I made an excel sheet, typing down most interesting objects including the material it is made of, where it is from and from which date. If there were any other interesting things, for example in the description of the object, I would write it down as well. I decided not to list all items, as this would have cost me a lot of time and some items were not that interesting. For example, there are many tent poles in the collection of the museum, and they are all separately registered in the system. I wrote down that there are tent poles in the museum collection, instead of writing down every single one the museum has. I ended up with a list of 199

46 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway items. Some examples of items in the collection of the museum are ski’s, different types of clothing, jewelry, senna grass which is used to isolate shoes, knives, halters for the reindeers, parts of shoe soles and reindeer skins. Even though this part of the research might not have given me much data for my research, it did provide me with useful information about Sámi objects that have been very helpful when I was in the field. It helped me recognizing items, but also gave me more understanding about some Sámi traditions and Sámi history. Besides that, when talking to people working at museums in Norway, they were very interested in hearing about the collection of Sámi items in the Netherlands. This part of the research therefore prepared me for my fieldwork in Norway.

5.2 Introduction to national and Sámi museums

Arriving in Norway, I already had contacted the museums that I wanted to visit and scheduled interviews. I already visited the Tromsø museum once, and had done some research on the collections of the others. I therefore did feel relatively well prepared. What was new for me was when I heard about the difference between a Sámi museum and a national museum. A woman working at the front desk at the museum in Karasjok told me this. A museum is called a Sámi museum not because of the items it is showcasing, but when more than half of the museum staff has a Sámi background. If this is not the case, it is a Norwegian museum. I was surprised by this, as for me calling something a Sámi museum would have to mean that it is about the Sámi, in whatever way. When I asked what the implications of this were, the woman I was talking to started to get a little bit defensive. Not directed to me, but it was clear that she was frustrated about something. She explained to me that she felt upset because of lack of funding. The Norwegian government has different money pots to divide between different cultural initiatives. One of these pots of money is meant to be spent just on museums. The Sámi government is also dividing money, but in a different way. In the first place, they get their money for a large part from the Norwegian government. They have to divide it over money pots. They do not have a pot just meant for museums, but only a pot meant for cultural initiatives. This is broader than museums, and there are many people and organizations that can make a claim for this money. Museums therefore get less money, as the money is divided over a larger group. The woman I was talking with was upset about this. It was clear

47 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong that she did not blame the Sámi government, but blamed the Norwegian government, as they had constructed it this way. She told me that she experienced it as yet again a deliberate stab in the back from the Norwegian government and a sign that ‘Norwegianess’ was still seen as superior. This is of course, only the side of one Sámi woman expressing here feeling of annoyance, not representing the view of the group. How and where Sámi culture should be represented, is a debated topic in Norway (Lien and Nielssen 2011, 599). Bjørnar Olsen is one of these scholars, stating that the Karasjok Museum reproduces stereotypes by showing a reproduction of typical ethnographic displays: “The Sámi culture is presented through a focus on livelihood, handicraft and religion, without any sense of sense of change, historical sequences or chronology” (Lien and Nielssen 2011, 602; Olsen 2000). According to Lien and Nielssen, Olsen “argues that this lack of historical anchoring of the Sámi culture provides an image of a static, pre-modern Sámi culture” (2011, 602). I want to argue that this is not only the case in the Karasjok Museum, but also in the Kautokeino Museum. To some extent, the exhibition ‘Sámi culture’ at the Tromsø Museum can also been seen in this light, however as this exhibition is complemented with a different, more recent exhibition, it tells a different story. There are different challenges for museums in Finnmark. According to Olsen: “The heterogeneity of the ethnic situation in Finnmark creates several difficulties for a museum” (2010, 81). He uses the term of Renato Rosaldo: cultural borderland, meaning “ethnic contexts that are characterized by border zones” that keep moving (Olsen 2010, 81; Rosaldo 1989, 217). In such an ethnic context, exhibitions are often contested sites as it is impossible to create something that will fit the diversity of the region (Olsen 2010, 81). Looking at all the museums I visited and listening to the people I have interviewed, I think Sámi people are looking for some understanding and museums might be the public institution that can play a role in this. I will elaborate on this after the analysis of my visits to the museums in Norway.

5.3 National museums: Tromsø museum and Alta museum

I first visited the Tromsø museum, which is the university museum of the Arctic University (UiT). It was founded in 1972 and can be seen as the first research institute of northern Norway (University Museum Tromsø 2017a). Their research is divided between natural science and cultural science, this is also resembled in the museum as they also have an exhibition about the aurora borealis. The museum has two exhibitions about the Sámi.

48 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway

One is called ‘Sámi culture’ dating from the 1970s, the other one is called ‘Sápmi – becoming a nation’ which has even been made in a web exhibition, allowing you to ‘walk’ through the exhibition online (University Museum Tromsø 2017b). I met with professor Trude Fonneland, whose research interests are Sámi cultural history, religion and tourism and museum studies, and is researching the spiritual entrepreneurship of the Sámi. She also has a lot of knowledge on the history of the Tromsø museum. I came in touch with her after emailing the museum who referred me to her. We Image 3 - Part of the 'Sámi culture' exhibition started our conversation in the cafeteria of the museum where I explained my research. She immediately told me out the Pile o Sápmi, an initiative of the Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara whose brother, a young reindeer herder, took the Norwegian state to court as they had

Image 4 - Part of the 'Sámi culture' exhibition

49 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong ordered him to cut back his reindeer herd, which would mean that it was no longer economically possible for him to carry out this lifestyle (García-Antón 2016). As part of the protest, Máret Ánne Sara made a statement by piling reindeer skulls on top of each other and placing it in front of the district court in Tana, Finnmark. A year later, when I visited Tromsø in February, the trial was still going on. Just before I came, Pile o Sápmi organized another initiative, placing posters and prints throughout the center of Tromsø and even organizing a live Image 5 - Part of the 'Sámi culture' exhibition artwork with people walking around with reindeer heads (Olsen 2017). Professor Fonneland told me that these protests have some resemblance with the protests in the 1970s, as art became a very important subject at that time too. Professor Fonneland gave me a tour through the exhibitions and she explained how the items were collected and how the exhibitions have been designed. The first exhibition we saw was the ‘Sámi culture’ for which the items were for a large part collected in the 1970s by the former director at that Image 6 - Part of the 'Sámi culture' exhibition

50 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway time. He decided to start collecting items from reindeer herding Sámi as he was afraid that the Sámi culture would go distinct. The director at the time was raised in a Sámi community, but was not Sámi himself. He understood a bit of the Sámi language and was involved with many Sámi. The exhibition ‘Sámi culture’ resembles a Sámi culture and only a small part of it. It reflects Northern Sámi traditions of reindeer herders. Coastal Sámi are mentioned, but their culture is not shown in this exhibition. Therefore, one can say that this exhibition gives a one-sided viewpoint. Another observations is that the collection is masculine. It mainly shows the roles of the males and there is not much attention for the women in the Sámi culture. In this part of the exhibition, the Sámi also do not have a face, literally. The mannequins displaying ‘typical’ Sámi activities, such as riding a sled with reindeer, or sitting in the lavvu, do not have a face. There is a head, but no eyes, nose and mouth. It is just like they do not have an identity. Professor Fonneland emphasized this as well. She called it a “silent exhibition”. There is a lot of history in the objects that are shown, but this history is not being told. The objects are very static, placed on boards behind glass, with text explaining what it is. There are a few typical highlights in this exhibition: the turfhut, the lavvu, reindeer and clothing. The fear that a Sámi culture would go extinct, leads to a few critical points. First of all, which Sámi culture are we discussing here? We cannot speak of the Sámi culture, as there is not the culture but of a Sámi culture. But the thought behind displaying THE Sámi culture, especially during that time, is interesting. As noticed before, after the World War II and due to the Norwegianization, there was a very one-sided image of the Sámi, namely the people herding reindeers and living as nomads in the tents displayed at the museum. There was little understanding, especially during that time, of Sámi living in houses, among the coast, practicing different livelihoods. This exhibition nowadays, might be more of value for us than almost 50 years ago. It now tells a story of how Sámi were seen and what their position was in society. The ‘Sámi culture’ exhibition is especially interesting in contrast with the more recent exhibition ‘Sápmi – Becoming a nation’. This one opened in 2000 and shows how Sámi experienced a political and cultural awakening during the postwar years (Eidheim, Bjørklund and Brantenberg 2012, 95). The initiators and curators of the exhibition, Harald Eidheim, who’s work I have discussed earlier, Ivar Bjørklund and Terje Brantenberg, wrote a paper to review this exhibition. One of their reasons is that “by making a presentation of a modern

51 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong indigenous movement, we wanted to present an alternative to how most ethnographic museums have tended to represent the life of indigenous peoples, where cultural history and material objects tend to dominate displays and exhibitions” (Eidheim, Bjørklund and Brantenberg 2012, 96). They continue: “The central challenge of the project was to create a convincing and meaningful expression of the unique character of how Sámi – through their cultural and political mobilization during the latter part of the twentieth century – initiate and develop an ethnopolitical movement and emerge as a nation” (Eidheim, Bjørklund and Brantenberg 2012, 96). “The Sápmi project is an attempt to translate the analytical perspective developed by Clifford (1988) for ‘writing ethnography’ to that of using the museum as means to communicate with a broad and diverse public” (Eidheim, Bjørklund and Brantenberg 2012, 96). With this exhibition, or as they rather call it a presentation, they want to show a different narrative about the Sámi political struggle. Their motivation came from the “wide gap between notions which prevails among Norwegians concerning the life of Sámi” (Eidheim, Bjørklund and Brantenberg 2012, 99). For example, reindeer herding is still seen as the symbol of Sámi life, whilst reindeer herders make up only a small minority of Sámi. Within these preconceptions Eidheim, Bjørklund and Brantenberg see a role of a museum (2012, 99). Museums, as well as media and the tourist industry have provided a certain notion about the Sámi, often one shrouded in some sort of romance and myths. Walking through the center of Tromsø, touristic stores are competing with each other in offering

Image 7 - The entrance towards the 'Sápmi - becoming a nation' exhibition 52 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway tours to see the northern lights with an ‘authentic’ Sámi guide, eating ‘authentic’ Sámi food and hearing ‘authentic’ Sámi stories. The role of the museum in this “public narrative of Sámi” might then be to offer a broader and more extensive story of Sámi people (Eidheim, Bjørklund and Brantenberg 2012, 100). The concept ‘discourse’ has therefore been important in the framing of this exhibition. This exhibition is placed in a context of many different debates about Sámi issues, a context of multi- dimensional discourses. It is an impossible task to design an exhibition that can portray all the Image 8 - The text at the entrance of the 'Sápmi - becoming a nation' exhibition. First in different discourses, but that is not what the Sámi, then in Norwegian and lastly in English. makers of this exhibition intended. They wanted to offer a different type of narrative, a political discourse and with that also expected to receive criticism. They looked at the history of the role of cultural historical museums in Scandinavia, and saw that especially in Norway these museums have contributed “to the development of a Norwegian national identity” (Eidheim, Bjørklund and Brantenberg 2012, 101). As the older exhibition also did not refer to any ethnopolitical debate, there was room for this new exhibition. For me, having some knowledge on the history and struggle of the Sámi, I am very positive about this exhibition. During my first visit in 2014, which was part of a class I was taking on Sámi culture, Ivar Bjørklund explained the reasons behind it and how to see it in relation to the ‘Sámi culture’ exhibition. There are two things I think are strongest in this exhibition. The first one is seen when entering: 11 large portraits of people that by many people might not be recognized as having a Sámi background, but that are Sámi. All with different backgrounds, professions and places where they are from. This for me sets the tone of the rest of the exhibition and also shows that the makers were trying to avoid: othering. Eidheim, Bjørklund and Brantenberg “chose a way of presentation that could steer the thoughts and associations of visitors away from seeing Sámi as exotic and different – as a

53 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong

Image 10 - The style of the 'Sápmi - becoming Image 9 - In the 'Sápmi - becoming a a nation' exhibition. nation' exhibition. Placing Sámi history in a global context.

case of anthropological ‘othering’ – to a view of Sámi as a people seeking selfhood and equity in transnational and global space” (2012, 105). Related to this, the second point I find strongest of this exhibition is the relation with the older ‘Sámi culture’ one. To me it shows the contrast of the different time periods, but most importantly to me the ‘Sámi culture’ exhibition shows a narrative that used to be more common. Alta museum The Alta Museum, even though not an official Sámi museum, is focused on themes related to the area, including Sámi history. The main attraction of the museum are the rock carvings that are visible outside the museum during spring and summer time. When I was visiting in February they were covered in snow. The permanent collection upstairs is a large room in which several different themes are exhibited. One part explains the rock carvings signs and their possible meanings. There is another section about the Sámi drum, the signs on the drums and their meaning. Then there is part about quarries that functioned in the region. The most interesting part for this research is the part about the Alta Kautokeino conflict. This corner of the museum showed many different protest posters and explained the events and the demands that were made during this protest. Downstairs there was

54 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway

Image 11 - Part of the 'Sápmi - becoming a nation' exhibition. Showing how the World War II speeded up the assimilation. space for a temporary exhibition called in Sámi ‘Na, maid dál?’ which means Sámi cultural heritage coming home (Alta museum 2017). This exhibition consists of objects coming from the Norwegian Folk Museum in Oslo that originate from the Alta region and from the sea Sámi. These objects fall under the project Bååstede. This project is focused on returning Sámi objects to the regions where they originally come from. The official Sámi museums will get official ownership over them. This is also the case for the museums in Karasjok and Kautokeino. Alta therefore has these items temporarily on loan. There are some difficulties related to the Bååstede project. The museums that will gain ownership do not have the capacity right now to receive so many new objects. Besides that, they do not get any extra funding.

I visited the museum two times. The first time I was there on my own, walking through the museum, making notes and taking pictures. This was at the beginning of my trip through Finnmark, and Alta lay on the route to Karasjok. As the bus from Tromsø to Alta took eight hours and the bus to Karasjok does not go every day, I decided to spend an extra day in Alta and visit the museum. I already had an interview scheduled with a Eva Johansen

55 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong working at the Alta Museum doing her PhD on similar topics as my research. The first time visiting the museum therefore was for me a way to get into doing research at museums. The second time I went, I spoke with Eva Johansen, Museum Educator and PhD candidate. She gave me a tour through the museum and told me more about the recent exhibition about returning objects. The Alta museum was founded in 1978 and started with objects that were collected from the local community. It is not an official Sámi museum, but located in a Sámi area and they are also telling a story about this Image 12 - A coat made of sheep in the 'Na, maid dá?' particular area. The ‘Na, maid exhibition. dá?’ exhibition is made in collaboration with locals. One part of the objects come from the Norwegian Folk Museum, the other objects from people in the area. During the tour we discussed the objects on showcase. For example, there is a gákti that is typical for this area. As discussed in an earlier chapter, the situation of the Sámi people living along the coast was very different from the Sámi living inland. The coastal Sámi have been affected even harder by the assimilation policies, Eva Johansen told me. Even after the revitalization period, the coastal Sámi were not that known. The Sámi became more well known, but in the imagery of inland reindeer herding Sámi. Symbols of Sáminess were those of the inland Sámi, not of the coastal Sámi. Besides that, there was not that much general knowledge about the diversity within the Sámi. The coastal Sámi therefore were still invisible before. However, at the moment as

56 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway more and more people are discovering and embracing their Sámi roots, especially people living on the coast and in the fjords, this gákti shown in the museum has become an important example for making new gákti’s. There are other objects, such as a coat which is made from sheep instead of reindeer, which is typical for the coast. Another object is a bonnet horn, which women wore in hats. Interesting is that these objects are chosen because they tell something more than being an object that is typical for this Image 13 - A gákti in the 'Na, maid dá?' exhibition area. As Eva Johansen explains to me, these objects are not seen as typical Sámi objects, even though they are typical for the coastal Sámi. In addition, showing these objects that for a long time have not been out in the open, offers some sort of remembrance. During my interview with Eva Johansen, the Norwegianization was an important topic. There are still remnants of it that are visible. For example, most Sámi objects from the museum were collected during the 1970s, but they were not categorized as Sámi objects. During that time, the cultural revitalization of the Sámi had not yet fully begun and Norwegianization was still happening. By not categorizing items as originating from Sámi people and being connected to Sámi (cultural) history, history was being covered up. Eva Johansen explained to me how the revitalization differed between the inland and coastal Sámi. The Alta museum has, especially with the ‘Na, maid dá?’ exhibition taken on a certain role in educating about the history of the coastal Sámi. They are not just showing the objects, but have carefully chosen these to tell a certain narrative. Eva Johansen told me

57 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong about how people from the area were involved during the return of these objects and the opening of the exhibition. The objects are accompanied with pictures and small movies of the people that have helped in contributing to this exhibition. The moment the items are returned to the area are also shown. For example, a man who makes duodji was very excited to hold a wooden box which has been returned to the area since it left 100 years ago There are also stories that go beyond the objects and address the assimilation. There is a woman who tells her story about how she only spoke Sámi with her father and because of her interest in the language was able to learn it. At school she had to speak Norwegian. Another story is about a woman who is now working in the administration of the Alta municipality and only learned that her father spoke Sámi after he died. Now she is rediscovering her Sámi roots. After the tour through the museum I had the opportunity to ask Eva Johansen a few more questions. I was especially interested in the Bååstede project, as the Alta museum is a Norwegian museum and the project is focused on official Sámi museums. She explained to me that they have a loan contract for the objects, but that it is unsure how the Bååstede project will continue. The museums that will receive objects, such as in Karasjok and Kautokeino, lack funding to securely store and safe the objects. The details of this still need

Image 14 - The bonnet horn in the 'No, maid dá?' exhibition.

58 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway to be worked out. It could be the case that for example the Tromsø museum will store some items, as they have more capacity. However, formal ownership will be given to the Sámi museums. I also asked her about this, what I call, a new wave of revitalization during which more and more people are showing their Sámi roots by using material culture. Eva Johansen said that she thinks people are now wearing the gákti more often, but are also searching for other ways to express their Sámi identity, such as learning the Sámi language and getting active in Sámi organizations. Also being more open about the history of the area and of their families. Talking about it contributes to moving from the private to the public sphere, which is important to do, says Eva Johansen. The bååstede project could be something that contributes to this, as it helps in reflecting on and reconciling with the past. It also shows that indigenous people can control their own cultural history. It gives some power back to the indigenous community in that sense. My next question was about the current struggle the Sámi are facing. Eva Johansen said that this struggle differs per region, but also per level. For example, the Sámi parliament is dealing with other problems, such as lack of funding. The Sámi have rights on paper, but the money to make these rights happening is lacking. In the coastal area, the main struggle is about the fishing rights. Sámi on the coast are traditionally fishers, but they are now competing with industrial fisheries. This is related to another problem the coastal area is dealing with: defining the coastal area. Eva Johansen explained to me that the question is if

Image 15 - The part in the museum about the Alta Kautokeino conflict with many protest posters.

59 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong this is a living culture. Defining this could have legal implications as one could make a claim for it. She also named a few other problems, such as language in kindergartens, local municipalities and the distribution of money for cultural activities. She concludes with saying that these problems might all relate to the fact that it is difficult to place these items on the public agenda and not just keep it a private matter. Another interesting point that came up during the interview was the collaboration with an artist that grew up in the region. Yvonne Normanseth comes from Alta but now lives in Oslo, and has some Sámi roots herself. Her grandmother was Sámi but never told her family, who only found out about her Sámi background later. The artist is therefore familiar with it, even though she does not identify herself with being Sámi. She made three artworks inspired by three objects. This was interesting to me as it gives another dimension to the exhibition. By including a local artist who herself has an interesting and a nowadays common story about her Sámi background, a link with the present time is made. Also, it shows that art plays an important role in relation to topics such as revitalization, remembrance and returning. To conclude, there have been several themes that popped up during these visits to the Tromsø museum and the Alta museum, and during the interviews. To get a better picture of this, I will now start discussing these to conclude this section on Norwegian museums. The visit and interview at the Tromsø museum provided me information on how different narratives can be designed and what the role of museums can be in this. The Alta museum shows their role in also providing a not that much heard narrative of the coastal Sámi. In both cases it became clear that the even though Norwegianization and assimilation are in the past, the remnants of it are still visible. In Tromsø in the very visible way of an exhibition dating back from the 1970s. In Alta in the sense that some items deliberately never have been categorized as being Sámi in order to forget this part of history. Other recurrent topics are identity and revitalization. Many Sámi are (re)discovering their Sámi roots. The new exhibition in Tromsø shows this with the large portraits. No stereotypical images of the Sámi were shown but the diversity of people that feel Sámi, which is often forgotten (Webb 2006, 172). Another topic that has been addressed in both visits and interviews, is that of identity representation in museums. The contrast between both the Sámi exhibitions in Tromsø also shows the difference in identity representation. I already discussed this in some part above, but will repeat the most important observations

60 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway here. The main differences are that the old exhibition ‘Sámi culture’ mainly shows typical symbols of reindeer Sámi, is focused on males, and the mannequins that are portraying Sámi literally do not have a face. The new exhibition has tried to give a different narrative that there is no one Sámi identity by giving people a face and letting them tell their story. The Alta museum focuses in the ‘Na, maid dál?’ exhibition on identity representation of the coastal Sámi.

5.4 Sámi museums: Karasjok museum and Kautokeino museum

The Sámi museums in Karasjok and in Kautokeino are both part of the RiddoDuottarMuseat. This is the name for four Sámi museums and an art stock in Finnmark. The museum in Karasjok is named De Sámiske Samlinger and the museum in Kautokeino is the Kautokeino Bygdetun. I will refer to the Karasjok and Kautokeino Museum. Other museums that are part of the RiddoDuottarMuseat are a museum in Porsanger, the Kokelv SjøSámiske museum and the Sámi art division, the largest contemporary art collection of Sámi artist in the world, which is also located in Karasjok. During the time I was there, the art division was unfortunately closed so I did not have a change to visit it. I will now describe my visits to the Karasjok and Kautokeino museums, including describing and analyzing the interviews I had there. Karasjok museum I spent six days in Karasjok and visited the Karasjok museum twice. On my first visit, I did not have a meeting and went with a friend who also wanted to see the museum. At the museum, I started talking to a woman who works part time at the reception desk. She is from Lule Sámi descent. She told me some interesting things about how more and more people are recently finding out that they are from Sámi descent. During the time she was going to college in an area that was not typically seen as an area where many Sámi people lived, she told me that she was one of the few Sámi people. Nowadays, more and more people from that area are exploring their Sámi heritage. She sees this as a recent trend. The exhibitions of the Karasjok museum are not that large, however the Karasjok museum, established in 1972 as the first Sámi museum in Norway is also the largest Sámi museum of Norway (RDM 2017). It has the largest collection of Sámi traditional clothing in the world. The main goal of the museum, as stated on their website is “to promote Sámi culture and strengthen their status as an ethnic group” (RDM 2017). There are two larger

61 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong halls, one exhibiting Sámi gákti’s, new and old, and a recent exhibition on the Sámi drum, one of which is an original one and is very old. The other hall contains a lavvu, a sled with reindeer and a mannequin portraying a male Sámi in it. On the walls there are boards containing smaller duodji items and tools and equipment. The overall ambiance in this hall is that it is a bit dated. Besides the two halls, there is a long hallway which is used to present more recent contemporary art. Outside, which was not open due to the snow, are traditional Sámi buildings such as turf huts. At the entrance of the museum there is a sculpture of a man and a woman, made by Ivar Jåks. Also the door handle of the entrance door is made by Jåks, who used brass to make it, which is a sacred material in Sámi society (Lien and Nielssen 2011,605-606). A few days after my first visit I went to the museum again. This time I had an appointment with two women who are working for the museum, one of which is a senior consultant and works on organizing projects and realizing funding. She has as Sámi background. The other woman is a reindeer Sámi and also works at the museum. We talked for an hour and half about various topic, such as assimilation, what it means to be Sámi, the Norwegian government and the implementation of laws, how Sámi symbols are used wrongfully, but also topics concerning Sámi museums such as registering Sámi objects under a Norwegian name instead of the Sámi name and Sámi objects that are in museums outside of Sápmi and outside of Norway. This last topic, I also discussed with Eva Johansen at the Alta museum. I see ‘hiding’ Sámi objects by not calling them Sámi as part of the assimilation as well and so did my respondents.

Image 16 - A Sámi drum at the Karasjok Museum.

62 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway

Image 17 - Mannequins in the Museum. Image 18 - A museum diorama of a Sámi man on a sled pulled by a reindeer.

Already comparing this exhibition to the previous ones, I think it resembles the old exhibition of the Tromsø the most. There are similar types of dioramas and the mannequins that are being used also do not have a face. The most interesting part of the museum for me is the exhibition about the clothes and changing traditions. In this part of the museum they tried to give an idea of the diversity in clothing, but also showed the changing fashion trends in Sámi clothing. This for me addresses most the dynamic, moving habits and traditions of a diverse group of people. The hall displaying duodji, tools and equipment and dioramas such as the sled and the lavvu are interesting, but it does not show a story. Olsen and Webb would agree with this (2000; 2006; Lien and Nielssen 2011, 602-603). As Lien and Nielssen put it, these “critical views of Sámi museums can be seen in relation to the broader postcolonial critique of museums, ethnographic museums in particular” (2011, 603). Critique is often focused on how ‘others’ are represented by (often) the European ‘self’ (Lien and Nielssen 2011, 603). Interesting in this case then is that the Karasjok museum is run by Sámi people, but that they are still being “criticized for having inherited western museum

63 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong structures and conventions of display” (Lien and Nielsen 2011, 603). For me, the danger is the possible wrongfully representation of Sámi people. However, Lien and Nielssen do not agree with this. They believe that the Karasjok museum by not showing a chronological order in the exhibition, are trying to break with “dominant ways of Image 19 - A display of different Sámi clothing. structuring the past” (2011, 613). They also see that the connection to the contemporary art section offers a link between past and present and address identity struggles (Lien and Nielssen 2011, 614). I would agree with this, if the contemporary art section would play a larger role. At the time of my visit, it was only a small hallway that showed some contemporary art, and I did not see a connection with the other exhibitions. The exhibition showcasing duodji and small tools, does not show or explain if and how these items are used today. Besides that, even though Lien and Nielssen might have seen a connection between past and present, one can wonder if it is necessary for a museum to show a struggle. As Olsen explained for museums located in an ethnic or cultural borderland it is not possible to make an exhibition that will not be contested. Besides that, it is difficult to show a full story in a limited space with limited funds, but it is even harder to answer the question: whose story? However, in the light of a history of wrongfully represented people, an exhibition in the heart of Finnmark for me should show at least a glimpse of the past struggle and future.

Kautokeino museum The Kautokeino museum (Kautokeino Bygdetun) is also part of the RiddoDuottarMuseat. It is even smaller than the Karasjok museum: consisting of one high hall, with a small loft in it. The Sámi colors, blue, yellow, green and red are very visible throughout the entire exhibition. Upon my arrival I had emailed with the museum, but did

64 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway not manage to set up an official interview. When I arrived there was a woman manning the desks who was willing to show me the exhibition and answer a few of my questions. We started with an old picture of

Kautokeino. My Image 20 - An old picture of Kautokeino at the entrance of the Museum guide used this picture to explain to me the history of Kautokeino and the meaning of the name. Kautokeino means two things: in the middle and a good place for growing “shoe grass”, as she said, with which she meant senna grass that is used to put in your shoes for isolation. After the picture, we went on to the beginning of the exhibition: the remains of an old church, explaining the history of Kautokeino. Whoever build a church first, was the one who could in taxes. The Danish, Swedish and even the Russians have all been competing for this. It could even Image 21 - An overview of the Kautokeino Museum.

65 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong

Image 23 - Duodji items in the Kautokeino Museum. happen that you had to pay taxes to for example the Swedish and the Danish king. Therefore, the Sámi learned to be very quiet about how much they earned, which is still the case. It is very rude to ask someone how much reindeer they own, as this would be the same as asking how much money someone has. The WWII also had a massive impact on Kautokeino, as the entire region was burned and no house was left. However, the people from Kautokeino were affected differently than the Norwegians, Sámi or Kvens living among the coast, as most people in Kautokeino were traveling Image 22 - Clothing from the Kautokeino area.

66 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway with their reindeer herds and were less dependent on a house. The exhibition is focused on the Kautokeino area. For example, there is a display of the traditional gákti from this area. Other items that are portrayed are duodji items and tools. It mainly shows the Sámi culture from that area, but is not focused on for example the Alta Kautokeino conflict or other more political events. After I studied the exhibition, I went to woman at the desk again, as I wanted to ask her about the Bååstede project. This was when she explained to me how difficult it will be as the Karasjok museum will most likely become the owner of 1,000 Sámi objects but there is no space or (correct) storage for the objects and they are not getting extra funding. My overall feeling of the Karasjok museum was that there has been tried to exhibit as many typical Sámi items from the region in a small room, but that there is lacking a comprehensive story. Most items are also dated. There is no political side, even though Kautokeino has played an important role in the many struggles for rights (Lehtola 2004).

5.5 The North Norwegian Art museum and exhibition ‘There is no’

The fact that I have been able to the visit the North Norwegian Art Museum, or I should say the Sámi Daiddamusea, has been pure luck. The North Norwegian Art Museum in Tromsø is different from all the above-mentioned museums as it is not ethnographic, but an art museum. It is also important to note that it is a Norwegian museum and not necessarily focused on displaying Sámi artists. On the 15th of February, in corporation with the RiddoDuottarMuseat, as a surprise the Art Museum suddenly changed into the Sámi Daiddamusea with an exhibition called ‘There is no’ and a new logo: a big X. The exhibition showed both contemporary and older art from Sámi artists, such as Synnøve Persen en Monica Edmondson. The title and the logo refer to outsider ideas about Sámi art. When entering the exhibition, there is a description about the exhibition on the wall. The curator of the exhibition, Charis Gullickson, told me during my interview with her that there were people who said that the museum should not have an explanation and just have this exhibition. However, she felt that it would perhaps be too difficult to understand the full ideas behind the exhibition. A part of this text is the following: “The exhibition’s title, There Is No, takes its initial cue from some longstanding ideas that have circulated within and around Sámi artistic practice, and indigenous art practice more broadly.

67 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong

From an outsider perspective, the claim that ‘there is no Sámi word for art’ often revealed a number of misconceptions about Sámi culture. From an insider perspective, however, the self- affirmation that ‘there is no word for art in my language’ signaled a rejection of standard fine arts categories of reception and understanding. Building on this latter point of departure, There Is No offers up a series of dynamic and vibrant manifestations of cultural expression that strategically resist, extend and challenge established ways of thinking mainstream art history”.

Image 24 - Another text on the wall of the museum, first in Sámi.

Besides this museum being an art museum and not an ethnographic museum, I found the exhibition also very political. It is a true statement that is being made. Not only art is shown, but also duodji, but in a different way and not behind glass. As the Charis Gullickson explained to me, duodji is meant to be used and not to be showcased. In a museum setting however, it is not possible to not showcase it, but they have tried to do in a non- contemporary way. Completely changing a museum, even though temporary, is in my perspective a political statement. It offers Sámi art a place to be seen for the larger public and telling stories of Sámi history. Many Sámi museums do not have a place for the art shown in this museum, which means stories are not being told. Also the art and the artists that have contributed to this exhibition have some political role. Starting from who are called the pioneers in Sámi art, John Savvio and Iver Jåks, and by people who were part of

68 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway

Image 25 - Photo taken by the North Norwegian Art Museum. the Alta Kautokeino conflict such as Synnøve Persen and Britta Marakatt-Labba (SDMX 2017; Lehtola 2004). I had the opportunity to be at the opening of the exhibition. This was a night filled with speeches, joiks and artistic performances. The crowd existed of a large group of people who were wearing a gákti. During that night I also met the Charis Gullickson, curator, who I interviewed a few days later. I talked with her about the themes of the artworks. Identity is a major theme. This is visible in the way artists have used their own family members in their work. Also heritage, tradition and nature are recurring themes. The table with Sámi knives for example, are made by Sámi people born in the 1970s and 1980s, which proves that this tradition is still very important today. She also talked about the weird situation there is sometimes between Sámi people and Norwegians, still due to the Norwegianization period. As explained, many Sámi do not speak Sámi anymore due to the assimilation, however Norwegians still use language as a definer of someone being Sámi. So if one is asked if he or she can speak Sámi, and that person says no, people think it is weird that someone can still be Sami. Assimilation still plays an important part today.

69 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong

It is hard to compare this exhibition to the other museums I have seen, as this is the only art museum. But this has been by far the most political exhibition of Sámi art and duodji I have seen. The North Norwegian Art Museum has made a very deliberate decision in the artists they would show in this exhibition. They also provide some chronological order as well, in showing work from artists from the beginning of the 20th century and from today. Besides that, topics such as identity are very visible. For example, a piece of Swedish Sámi artist Monica Edmondson is also Image 27 - A bowl made by Monica Edmonson. shown (see figure 24). She has made 100 vases for the project called ‘100Migratory’. Museum Volkenkunde also recently bought one of her vessels. 100 vessels traveled all around the world with the following purpose: “In linking together the Sámi tradition and glass with international influences, these glass vessels can be seen as messengers – and metaphors – for ourselves. A vessel artistically produced and with its allusion to life itself, can bring Image 26 - Overview of one of the halls.

70 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway

Image 28 - Duodji and art come together. into focus such human questions as identity, origin, allegiance and migration” (Edmondson 2012).

5.6 Conclusion: the future of Sámi museums?

There has been many critique on Sámi museums (Lien and Nielssen 2011; Olsen 2000; Webb 2006; Mathisen 2010). Are Sámi museums not just representing the stereotypical image of Sámi people? But on the other hand Sámi museums offered Sámi people to be “responsible for the representation of their own culture and history” (Lien and Nielssen 2011, 603). I have seen many different museums and different exhibitions. There is a clear distinction between the Tromsø museum and its new exhibition and the North Norwegian Art museums and the rest of the ethnographic museums. In the Art museum, the new exhibition of the Tromsø museum and the new exhibition of the Alta museum, a different narrative was clearly visible. Identity and diversity of Sámi people played an important role. In the other exhibitions it often felt that items were showcased to show how the Sámi used to live.

71 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong

During my visits I have looked for identity representation. In some cases this was done in a way to show the diversity of people. In other cases I found that the representation was rather stereotypical. As discussed in Chapter two, according to McLaughlin these stereotypical representations do not have to be seen as negative (1999, 238). They may be seen as irony or show the journey of Sámi people. I do not agree with this looking at the current context Sámi people live in. Assimilation policies are over, however discrimination against Sámi still happens on different levels. Therefore, I do not see that stereotypical portrayal of a Sámi identity works.

Image 29 - The table filled with Sámi knives. Image 30 - A gákti made of food packaging.

72 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway

Chapter 6. Analysis and conclusion

This chapter will bring all the other chapters together and provide an answer to the question: How has material culture and identity representation in museums influenced the struggle for more rights and identity formation of Sámi in Northern Norway? I will address the following sub questions: 1. How have the Sámi struggled for indigenous rights and what role did representations of identity and material culture in museums play in this struggle? 2. What role does Sámi material culture plays during identity formation? 3. What effect had the Sámi cultural revitalization on Sámi identity and Sámi material culture? 4. How are material culture and identity of Sámi represented in the Volkenkunde Museum in Leiden and in museums in Norway? It is hard to answer these questions independently from each other, and I will therefore provide answers to these questions and the main research question in part 6.4. The following two parts will address the three main concepts and recurring themes in this research: identity, material culture and identity representation by museums. This Chapter will be concluded with a section on recommendations for further research and further research questions.

6.1 Sámi revitalization: discovering being Sámi

One thing that has become evident during my research is that there is a new revitalization period in which people are learning about their Sámi background. This was mentioned by most of my respondents. One of my respondents is a woman who did not know about her Sámi background until later and has been discovering her Sámi side by learning the language and buying a gákti. However, this is something that further research should investigate deeper. What has become evident during this research, and what chapter three already showed, is the complexity of identity. It is “not a match between inner experience and outer acknowledgement” or a “developmental achievement” (Lurhman 2001, 532). To understand the formation of Sámi individual identity and collective identity, it must be seen in the context of Sámi history. With a large chapter on Sámi history, I have tried to lay a base for understanding this.

73 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong

The effects of the assimilation period are still evident on different levels. First of all in museums. As my respondents at the museums in Alta, Karasjok and Kautokeino all told me, assimilation went even as far as in the registering of Sámi objects in the system as not Sámi. I find this striking as museums have also been used as a tool to ‘safe’ a culture before it would disappear, as the purpose was of the ‘Sámi culture’ exhibition in the Tromsø museum. However, the Norwegianization was so harsh and systematic that even Sámi objects in museums were not called Sámi objects. As my respondents at the Karasjok museum explained, the Sámi name of the object was not used, but a Norwegian translation was given, which does not mean the same. In Sámi there are many words that do not have a meaning in Norwegian. One of my respondents told me that there are more than 10 different words for shoes, depending on the material. But when registered at a museum, it was called ‘shoe’ in Norwegian, which does not cover the information about that shoe at all. For example, is it made of summer reindeer skins or winter reindeer skins? This information is important for Sámi, my respondent explained, as it provides you with a totally different shoe with a different quality. Also at other levels in society, the assimilation policies from the past are still sensible. One of my respondents working in the health care sector, explained how this sector still does not take Sámi culture and language in to account. Other respondents told me that even though on paper the Sámi have been given many rights, the implementation of it does not work out and often businesses, such as large mining companies, are still favored. Education in Sámi language still remains difficult in some situation, and one of my respondents blamed the government of this as well. Also on a personal level, the Sámi people I spoke to still experience discrimination, both from Norwegians and other Sámi people. The events of the past 17th of May have made this evident (NRK 2017). Identity is a personal thing but is highly influenced by the world around you (Holland et all. 1998, 5). This is evident in how people have been hiding their Sámi background, for example. Memmi addressed this as well in explaining that the colonizer still influences the subconscious of the colonized. In this case Sámi people are still being influenced by past assimilation policies by the Norwegian state. Bhabha also underlines this and explains that the colonized many years later can still feel how he or she as forced to conform to the majority culture. I believe that this is also true in the case of Sámi people. There is still this

74 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway distrust towards the Norwegian government and to some extent to the Norwegian society as well. During the cultural revitalization, shaping a collective identity was part of this identity politics carried out by some Sámi people. For this to work, it was important that there were many symbols of Sáminess, and material culture has been used for this, for example the clothing. During my research, I found that there is not a collective identity anymore, that is used by Sámi people to set themselves apart from the Norwegian society. In the present time it does not have the same ‘function’ as during the 1970s and 1980s. However, there are still fragments left of this collective identity, that are now colliding with each other, visible in some struggles within the Sámi. In the words of one of my respondents, she felt that there are ‘real’ and ‘fake’ Sámi, or ‘old’ and ‘new’ Sámi. With this she meant the difference between the people, often living in inner Finnmark who have grown up knowing about their Sámi background and people who have found out later in life. However, the words she used indicate a part of frustration, in her case towards ‘new’ Sámi. There is also a fragmentation between Sámi speaking Sámi’s and Sámi people who cannot speak Sámi.

6.2 The role of material culture

In this research I tried to find out what the role of material culture is in the identity formation and struggle for more rights of the Sámi. Identity formation was a topic that was addressed in every interview, however discussing the struggle for more rights was difficult as this is different for every person and on every level. I therefore focused more on identity formation. However, there is some evidence of the importance of material culture in the struggle for rights. The artist initiative Pile o Sápmi is an example of this, in which art was used to protest a court case of a Sámi reindeer against the state about cutting down his herd. In some ways, I think the ‘There is no’ exhibition in the North Norwegian Art Museum can be seen as some sort of protest in trying to get a Sámi art museum, in which material culture played a very important role. As this research was limited in time, researching a very broad topic as the struggles of Sámi people, proved very difficult, and I would recommend for further research to break this topic in smaller pieces. For example, the struggle of a changing environment, the struggle of the Sámi in health care, in language education, and in

75 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong the struggle against big mining and fishing companies. These are only a few examples I have encountered during my research. The role of material culture in the formation of identity was more evident. Especially for people who are discovering their Sámi background, material culture is a ‘tool’ that can be used to explore this part of one’s identity. This goes back to what Miller and Bourdieu were saying about how objects teaches us the habits of a society, and not for example education. I think it is therefore logical that in exploring this newly found part of your identity by engaging with objects that are seen to be part of that culture. Being Sámi and showing that you are Sámi are different in this case, again a remnant of the Norwegianization. Showing you are Sámi can still lead to stigmatization. Objects that play an important role are definitely clothing. Getting a gákti is an important event. My Airbnb host in Alta, for example, was very proud that at the 6th of February his children wore a gákti for the first time. During small talk with parents at the celebration at the Radhusset in Tromsø, they were very proud of their children wearing the gákti and signing joiks. The flag is another important item. On the 6th of February, it was visible throughout the entire city. A few of my respondents also used the flag during the Sámi national day. It is a very clear symbol of identifying as a Sámi person, and at the same time a symbol for the collective. Coastal Sámi, ‘new’ Sámi or reindeer Sámi, all have the same flag. One more observation I want to mention here is that one of my respondents at the Karasjok museum brought a plastic bag to the interview. She wanted to show it to me because it was a white plastic bag with the Sámi flag printed on it. She was appalled by this. She explained to me, in any other culture it is very bad when the flag is thrown on the ground and stamped on. With this bag happens the same thing, but no one cares about it. It is the Sámi flag that is being stepped on, but it is not seen as such. She gave me another example. In Karasjok there is the Sapmi Park, representing Sámi culture and history. When designing this park, the Sámi parliament approved the plan of using Sámi drums, a sacred symbol, as signs for the toilets. They hang the drums up with ‘Toilet’ written on it. She could not understand why anyone, especially with a Sámi background, would approve this. For me her reactions to this, are another prove how one is shaped by objects around him or her. She obvious felt so connected to these objects, that she found it unthinkable that it could be used for such a cause. For me this means that for her, these objects have a certain power. They contribute to her identity.

76 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway

Miller said that “the clothes were not superficial, they actually were what made us what we think we are” (Miller 2010, 13). Stuff, in this case clothes, make us something, instead of using stuff to represent our selves. But when reading the descriptions of objects of the Volkenkunde Museum in the Museum System, often the description of clothing mentioned that this item was worn to express one’s identity. If we look at the history of the Sámi, I would argue that Miller’s argument does not hold here. I agree with him to some extent, and perhaps in wearing clothes in the everyday life. But besides that, I believe that people, and in this case Sámi people, do use clothing as a symbol. In a history where symbols or signs of Sáminess were prohibited for a long time, I believe items have gained a symbolic meaning. If someone would take of all the Sámi clothing, one would still be Sámi. The clothing in this case functions as a symbol, to show other people that you are Sámi. Here I have to refer again to Gell and his thoughts on objects and agency (1998). His ideas go beyond objects ‘just’ being a symbol. People not only use objects to express who they are, the relationship is reciprocal. I see this being true in the case of Sámi. Material culture can shape people. In the case of Sámi, they have a relationship with the gákti they are wearing. It are not just fabrics covering a naked body, the ‘power’ of it goes beyond that. Even though an object is not a “self-sufficient agent”, it can be the “manifestation of agency” and therefore have similar effects (Gell 1998, 20). A gákti can give a person some sort of power. Especially in the case of the Sámi, who are physically not different from Norwegians, putting on a gákti can transform a person from being possibly Norwegian to visible Sámi. In this case, I see both these strains of thought present: objects as symbols and having agency.

6.3 Identity representation in museums

As chapter two showed, museums play an important role in the representation of identities. This has also become clear during my fieldwork at museums. However, the question of how to represent for example Sámi people, is not that easy to answer. Firstly, due to the diversity of Sámi people. I therefore looked more into the concept of a collective identity. Of course, it is not possible to represent Sámi people in a way that agrees with everyone, and neither is it possible to display the entire Sámi history, as this is interpreted by everyone in a different way. As discussed in chapter three, museums and especially ethnographic museums have faced criticism about representing a non-Western society from a Western point of view

77 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong

(Haas 1996, 1; Lien and Nielssen 2011,603). In the case of the museums in Norway, some of them are run by Sámi people, however, as has also become clear, there is some critique about these museums as well. Bjørnar Olsen, for example, critiques the Karasjok Museum for showing stereotypical images of Sámi people by reproducing typical ethnographic displays. In my analysis of the museums, this was something I encountered as well. Also, Kautokeino and in some extent the Tromsø museum, contribute to this. However, there is also a whole other tendency going. I have encountered quite a few exhibitions and initiatives that make me believe that the role of museums is shifting from what it used to be. This is based on comparing the more recent exhibitions to the older exhibitions. For me this goes together with changes in society. Firstly, the new exhibition ‘Sápmi – becoming a nation’ at the Tromsø museum has tried to give a different narrative than its old exhibition. Not just showing items but telling a story. Also, individual identity and not collective identity plays an important role in this exhibition. The Alta museum offers another dimension with the exhibition ‘Na, maid dá?’. This exhibition and the Bååstede project can perhaps be seen as signs of a changing attitude towards Sámi material culture and perhaps Sámi culture in general. I want to be careful with this assumption as there are also enough signs of a more negative attitude towards Sámi people, but in the museum world this might be changing. At least, the idea of returning Sámi objects to Sámi land, seems to be part of some sort of reconciliation and making up for wrongdoing in the past. The implementation of the Bååstede project, which sounds like an amazing positive project, might be tricky. Funding and storage space are the most important difficulties that need to be overcome to make it a successful project. The Sámi museums already have full storages. For example, most items at the ‘There is no’ exhibition came from the Karasjok museum, who do not have a space to display these items. The Karasjok museum tries to tie its more traditional items with contemporary art. However, this was very limited. Representation of a Sámi collective identity was in my opinion traditional. Having dioramas of a Sámi sitting on a sled with a reindeer, might give a glimpse of the past and is a romantic picture to see, however, it was hard to see something about the struggle for more rights, as this was the initial goal of the museum. The exhibition about the different traditional clothing on the other hand, was a different representation of Sámi identity. Showing the different styles from different locations and time periods, one

78 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway gets a feeling of evolvement. The Kautokeino museum is very focused on the Kautokeino area. Also, the representation of Sámi identity is that of people from the region. One learns a great deal about the region, by only showing items that are from Kautokeino. However, there was no evolvement visible throughout the exhibitions. The North Norwegian Art Museum with the ‘There is no’ exhibition is hard to compare to the previous mentioned museums as that is comparing art with ethnography. I think it is also possible to look at this exhibition as some sort of movement or statement. Sámi museums, such as the RiddoDuottarMuseat, the umbrella organization of the Karasjok and Kautokeino museums, are lacking in funding and other resources, but are still making themselves heard by for example organizing this exhibition in cooperation with the North Norwegian Art Museum. To avoid making assumptions about Sámi material culture, I decided to bring a map with pictures of a few of the items of the Volkenkunde Museum to interviews. Even though I did not use it as much as I thought I would do, the results when using it were very in interesting. The first time I showed the photos to respondents was at the Karasjok museum. One of the woman I was interviewing, part of a reindeer herding family, was especially interested and seemed have substantial knowledge on Sámi material culture. As she was flipping through the pictures, she was giving me information about the objects, just as I planned. When looking at a picture of a full outfit on a mannequin, she stopped and said: “This is all wrong”. She meant that the clothing did not match with each other. The coat was for men and the shoes were for women, the shoe bands upside down, and you would never combine the colors of the pants and coat. This was very interesting for me to here and at the same time showed me the difficulty in displaying items you are not familiar with. This could lead to an unintentional wrongful representation of a group of people.

6.4 Conclusion: answering research question

In this section I will step by step answer the research question: How has material culture and identity representation in museums influenced the struggle for more rights and identity formation of Sámi in Northern Norway? I will start with the first part on identity representation and material culture, followed by formation of Sámi identity, struggle for rights and cultural revitalization.

79 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong

Representation of Sámi identities has been very important in the past, both on the side of the Norwegians and the Sámi. The Norwegians could use it for their own process of Norwegianization, the Sámi for their identity politics and struggle for more rights. The situation today is different. However, speaking to my respondents, I have heard stories of how Sámi people still feel marginalized. Sámi Museums, even though lacking resources, have a role in dealing with this marginalization. On the one hand, they still have some traditional representation of Sámi, but different exhibitions have shown that this is changing. Initiatives such as the ‘There is no’ exhibition and Pile o Sápmi, show the importance of material culture, objects and art in the struggle for more rights and identity formation. With objects they are trying to make a statement. Showing a pile of bloody reindeer skulls as a protest against cutting down a reindeer herd, creates attention for this cause. The tendency of people discovering their Sámi past will grow as there is less marginalization towards Sámi people. However, the collective identity created in the past to mobilize Sámi people in the struggle for more rights is not accurate anymore. Sámi people are very diverse, not only in their material culture and if they speak Sámi language or not, but also in livelihoods and histories. This is very much visible in the current Sámi politics, as there are struggles between different groups (reindeer herders versus non-reindeer herders, within politics). Identity of course is not static but changes, and this seems to be the same for the collective identity of Sámi people. This is an important point for the future and would be interesting to see how and if this collective identity evolves over the years. Material culture seems to play an important role in the identity formation of people. As there are very few (or no) physical signs of being Sámi at all, material culture such as clothing, jewelry, hats or shoes are symbols of showing that you are Sámi. Material culture can in that sense be used to enhance your identity and make it visible not only for you, but for the world around you. In the case of the Sámi, I believe it is even extra important for people, to make a stand against years of Norwegianization. Material culture and identity representation contribute to the image people (the non-Sámi community) have of Sámi people. In the past this has been very traditional, often of reindeer herders, but initiatives such as ‘There is no’ and the ‘Sápmi – becoming a nation’ are bringing change to this. The formation of Sámi identity and cultural revitalization, and perhaps the struggle for more rights, is influenced by material culture and identity representation in the sense that it shows more diversity. I cannot stress enough the diversity

80 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway of Sámi people, and the reason I feel I have to do this comes from hearing stereotypical ideas about Sámi people. However, museums are starting to show more diversity as well, and initiatives such as Bååstede seem to show more respect to Sámi material culture than before. I would therefore like to argue that material culture and identity representation by museums are contributing to shaping of one’s identity and the image society has over a group of people.

6.5 Recommendations

There are a few recommendations I have to make. It should be clear that further research on this topic is necessary. Due to limited time and resources (such as an interpreter), the scale of this research is very small. My first recommendation therefore is to extend the fieldwork period. This allows you to build relationships with your respondents and gain more trust for them. My second recommendation will be to learn Norwegian (and even Sámi) or work with an interpreter. I do have some knowledge of the Norwegian language, but not good enough to have full conversations with people. I knew that the younger generations would speak good English, but I also encountered an elder demographic that did not speak English and missed out on a few conversations that could have been very helpful for my research. The third recommendation for further research is to conduct more in-depth research, which goes together with extending the fieldwork period. It was only possible for me to meet people only once for a brief interview, instead of speaking to my respondents more times and perhaps also use observations more. As this conclusion has shown, there are still plenty of opportunities for further exploration of this topic. It would also be possible to conduct a similar type of research in a different setting. I want to propose a few further research topics that I have encountered during my research and that will be interesting for further research. Firstly, researching the new revitalization period. To what extent can we actually speak of a new wave of revitalization? Secondly, related to material culture is researching other values of objects instead of the symbolic. I have touched upon this briefly in discovering Alfred Gell, but this could be a research on its own (1998). Another topic is the role of museums that seems to be shifting from a warehouse of objects of (ancient) cultures, to a way to protest or shape one’s identity, and perhaps, in the future, to a contact zone. Lastly, researching struggles of Sámi nowadays proved to be too large for this research. However, I did encounter various

81 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong struggles Sámi people are facing today. For example, fishing rights, land rights, environmental changes, and preservation of cultural traditions. These all could be starting points for further research. This list could be more extensive, but I believe these are the most pressing issues I encountered during my research.

82 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway

Bibliography

Alta museum. 2017. “Na, maid dál? Sámisk kulturarv på vei hjem.” http://www.alta.museum.no/sider/tekst.asp?side=711 (May 22, 2017).

Ames, Michael M. 1986. Museums, the Public and Anthropology: A Study in the of Anthropology. Vancouver: University of British Colombia Press.

Ames, Michael M. 1991. “Biculturalism in Exhibitions.” Museum Anthropology: 15(2). 7-17.

Appadurai, Arjun. 1986. The social life of things. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Arctic Council. 2015. “Saami Council (SC).” http://www.arctic-council.org/index.php/en/about-us/permanent-participants/sc (May 29, 2017).

Barnard, Alan and Jonathan Spencer. 2012. The Routledge Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology. New York: Routledge.

Bhabha, Homi K. 1990. “The other question: difference, discrimination and the discourse of colonialism.” In: Out there: Marginalization and Contemporary Culture. Cambridge: MIT.

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1972. Outline of a theory of practice. Oxford: Cambridge University Press.

Broekhoven van, Laura, Buijs, Cunera and Pieter Hovens. 2010. Sharing Knowledge & Cultural Heritage: First Nations of the Americas. National Museum of Ethnology: 39. Leiden: Sidestone Press.

Clifford, James. 1988. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

83 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong

Clifford, James. 1997. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late 20th Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Clifford, James. 2013. Returns: Becoming Indigenous in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Drugge, Anne-Lill (eds.). 2016. Ethics in Indigenous Research. Vaartoe: Centre for Sámi Research Umeå University.

Edmondson, Monica. 2012. “100Migratory – Project Description.” https://100migratory.wordpress.com/100-migratory-what-why-and-where/ (June 2, 2017).

Eidheim, Harald. 1971. Aspects of the Lappish Minority Situation. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.

García-Antón, Katya. 2016. “Máret Ánne Sara.” http://www.documenta14.de/en/artists/13491/maret-anne-sara (May 21, 2017).

Geertz, Clifford. 1983. Local Knowledge – Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. New York: Basic Books, Inc.

Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency. An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Goffman, Erving. 1986. Stigma: notes on the management of spoiled identity. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Gupta, A., & Ferguson, J. (2007). “Beyond “Culture”: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference.” In A. C. G. M. Robben & J. A. Sluka (Eds.), Ethnographic Fieldwork: An Anthropological Reader. Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Haas, Jonathan. 1996. “Power, Objects, and a Voice for Anthropology.” Current Anthropology. 37(1): 1-22.

84 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway

Henriksen, John B. 1999. Saami Parliamentary Co-operation. International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs Document No. 93. Kautokeino: Nordic Sámi Institute.

Hicks, Dan and Mary C. Beaudry. 2010. The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies. Oxford University Press.

Holland, Dorothy et al. 1998. Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Hoskins, Janet. 2006. “Agency, Biography and Objects”. In Handbook of Material Culture, eds. Tilley, Christopher et al. London: Sage Publications.

Jenkins, Pierre. 1992. Pierre Bourdieu. London: Routledge.

Jenkins, Richard. 1996. Social Identity. New York: Routledge.

Keurs ter, Pieter J. 2011. Materiële Cultuur en Vergankelijkheid. Oratie Universiteit Leiden.

Lehtola, Veli-Pekka. 2004. The Sámi People: Traditions in Transition. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press.

Lidchi, Henrietta. 2013. “The poetics and the politics of exhibiting other cultures.” In: Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, ed. Stuart Hall. London: Sage Publications.

Lien, Sigrid and Hilde Nielssen. 2011. “Conventional Ethnograpic Display or Subversive Aesthetics? Historical Narratives of the Sámi Museum, RiddoDuottarMuseat-Sámid Vuorká-Dávvirant (RDM-SVD) in Karasjok, Norway.” Conference proceedings from EuNaMus.

Luhrmann, T.M. 2001. “Identity in Anthropology.” Elsevier Ltd 11: 532-536.

85 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong

Måso, Nils and Anders Boine Verstad. 2017. “For første gang i historien blir nyttårstalen ikke holdt på Sámisk.” NRK. https://www.nrk.no/sapmi/for-forste-gang-i-historien-blir- nyttarstalen-ikke-holdt-pa-Sámisk-1.13290446 (June 1, 2017).

Mathisen, S.O. 2010. “Likt men likevel forskjellig. Om representasjon av Sámiskidentitet og forhistorie I Sámiske museer og majoritetsmuseer.” In Samling og Museum. Kapitler av Museenes Historie, Praksis og Ideologi. Olso: Novus.

McLaughlin, Moira. 1999. Museums and the Representation of Native Canadians. Negotiating the Borders of Cultures. New York: Garland Publishing Inc.

Memmi, Albert. 1965. The Colonizer and the Colonized. Boston: Beacon Press.

Miller, Daniel. 2010. Stuff. Cambridge: Polity Press.

NRK. 2017. “Sameforeningsleder: - Anmeld ALL samehets til politiet.” https://www.nrk.no/sapmi/sameforeningsleder-etter-17.-mai-hets-av-samer_-_- anmeld-alt-til-politiet-1.13523329 (May 29, 2017).

Olsen, Bjørnar. 2000. “Bilder fra Fortida? Reoresebtashiber av Sámisk Kultur I Sámiske Museer.” Nordisk Museologi. 2: 13-30.

Olsen, Kjell. 2010. Identities, Ethnicities and Borderzones. Examples from Finnmark, Northern Norway. Stamsund: Irkana Akademisk.

Olsen, Arne Skaug. 2017. “The Long Hard Cold Struggle.” http://www.kunstkritikk.no/kritikk/the-long-hard-cold-struggle/ (May 30, 2017).

Pedersen, Steinar. 2012. “The Coastal Sámi of Norway and their rights to traditional marine livelihood.” Arctic Review on Law and Politics. 3: 51-80.

86 Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway

Polletta, Francesca and James M. Jasper. 2001. “Collective Identity and Social Movements.” Annual Review of Sociology. 27:283-305.

Prown, David Jules. 1982. “Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method.” Winterthur Portfolio: 17(1). 1-19.

RDM. 2017. “De Sámiske Samlinger.” http://rdm.no/english/de_Sámiske_samlinger/ (May 30, 2017).

Rosaldo, Renato. 1989. Culture and Truth. The remaking of Social Analysis. Boston: Beacon Press.

SDMX. 2017. http://www.sdmx.no/en/Sámi-daida-museum#about (June 2, 2017).

Simpson, M.G. 1996. Making Representations. Museums in the Post-Colonial Era. New York: Routledge.

Tafjord, Bjørn Ole. 2012. “Indigenous Religion(s) as an Analytical Category.” In Method and Theory in the Study of Religion.

The Guardian. 2016. “Reindeer shrink as climate change in the arctic puts their food on ice.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/12/reindeer-shrink-as-climate- change-in-arctic-puts-their-food-on-ice (June 1, 2017)

Tilley, Christopher et al. 2006. Handbook of Material Culture. London: Sage Publications.

Tråante. 2017. “Jubileumsåret.” http://www.tråante2017.no/sme/programme-2017/jubileumsaret/ (June 1, 2017)

Tromsø University Museum. 2017a. “About us.” https://en.uit.no/tmu/om (May 21, 2017)

87 Master thesis Cultural Anthropology – Charlotte de Jong

Tromsø University Museum. 2017b. “Exhibitions.” https://en.uit.no/tmu/utstillinger (May 21, 2017)

Webb, Sharon. 2006. “Making museums, making people: the representation of the Sámi through material culture.” Public Archaeology. 5(3): 167-183.

Wereldculturen. 2017. “Collectiedatabase van Stichting Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen.” http://collectie.wereldculturen.nl (June 26, 2017).

88