Indigenous Culture Jamming: Suohpanterror and the Articulation of Sami Political Community
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Journal of Aesthetics & Culture ISSN: (Print) 2000-4214 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/zjac20 Indigenous Culture Jamming: Suohpanterror and the articulation of Sami political community Laura Junka-Aikio To cite this article: Laura Junka-Aikio (2018) Indigenous Culture Jamming: Suohpanterror and the articulation of Sami political community, Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, 10:4, 1379849, DOI: 10.1080/20004214.2017.1379849 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2017.1379849 © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Published online: 08 Oct 2018. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 965 View Crossmark data Citing articles: 1 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=zjac20 JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS & CULTURE 2018, VOL. 10, 1379849 https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2017.1379849 SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE - SÁMI REPRESENTATION Indigenous Culture Jamming: Suohpanterror and the articulation of Sami political community Laura Junka-Aikio Giellagas Institute for Sámi Studies, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland ABSTRACT KEYWORDS This article examines the work of the anonymous Sámi artist and activist group Culture jamming; Suohpanterror as an example of Indigenous culture jamming, which uses global visual decolonization; Facebook; archives and the social media to articulate a contemporary Sámi subjectivity politically. In Indigenous art; collective a short time, Suohpanterror has gained national and international recognition as a new laughter; Sámi people Sámi voice, which is challenging earlier representations and conceptions of the Sámi. However, instead of focusing upon Suohpanterror’s efforts to address the dominant society, this study is concerned mainly with Suohpanterror’s operation within, and at the fringes of, the Sámi community itself. To this end, I examine Suohpanterror’s entanglements in the small Sámi “uprising” that took place in the social media in spring 2013 around the interconnected issues of Sámi definition, identity and the potential ratification of the ILO convention 169 in Finland. I argue that in the context of a highly politicized national public sphere which is considered insensitive to Sámi perspectives, “liking”,consumingandshar- ing Suohpanterror’s work online has offered an easy, effective and unmistakably trendy way to publicly identify with a certain set of (Sámi) political views, and to perform a political “us” which feeds, in particular, on experiences of a shared community of knowledge, and of collective laughter. Suohpanterror, an anonymous artist group known mastermind behind Suohpanterror,itwasprecisely primarily for provocativeonlineposterartdisse- the negative press towards reindeer herding Sámi minated through Facebook, is undoubtedly one of and the fact that they were called publicly “terror- the most transformative phenomena that have ists” that originally prompted the name and the emerged within Sámi cultural life in Finland over idea of Suohpanterror.3 this decade.1 Bringing forth imaginaries of direct This article will examine Suohpanterror’swork action and even militancy instead of “silent dis- as a case of Indigenous culture jamming, which approval”, Suohpanterror has successfully renewed uses global visual archives and the social media to the image of the Sámi and updated Sámi political articulate a contemporary Sámi subjectivity politi- articulation in the age of the social media. This is cally. To this end, I shall focus on Suohpanterror’s reflected already in the name of the group, which entanglements in a small Sámi “uprising” (or, as I ironically negates the attributes that have tradi- shall call it here, a Sámi Spring), which took place tionally been attached to the Sámi as a peace in the social media in spring 2013 around the loving and accommodating people, by others as interconnected issues of Sámi definition, identity much as the Sámi themselves (see Lehtola 1994; and the potential ratification of the ILO convention Näkkäläjärvi 2010,4).2 However,, in the present 169 in Finland. The vast body of Suohpanterror’s especially the reindeer herding Sámi often find online poster art is often described as an example themselves in the firing line when conflicts over of decolonial art, which makes innovative use of land use, natural resources and wildlife protection global visual archives to renew the image and in the Sámi homeland area flare up (Magga 2012; representation of the Sámi, and to make their see also Heikkilä 2006). While suohpan,in voices audible within the wider society (for Northern Sámi, is the word for the rope or the instance, Tamminen 2014;West2017). While the lasso used for catching a reindeer, terror in ways in which this artist collective is representing Suohpanterror can therefore be seen to refer to a the Sámi, and communicating Sámi concerns, iden- perceived threat (or resistance) waged by the rein- tity and resistance to others—to the dominant deer herding Sámi, or simply to ironically mimic Finnish society and to international audiences—is those contemporary discourses that are hostile to certainly also worth exploring, here I am more Sámi reindeer herders. According to the artist- interested in the meanings and uses that this body CONTACT Laura Junka-Aikio [email protected] Giellagas Institute for Sámi Studies, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 2 L. JUNKA-AIKIO of online poster art has for the Sámi themselves, Through a direct reference to the documentary, within and at the fringes of the Sámi community, the poster conveys irony and criticism on several and on the level of local political articulation. different levels. The joint-smoking Sámi-Marley is The first online posters associated with the clearly a peace-loving, even passive, rebel who seeks group were uploaded on the newly created dissociation from the state and its imposing laws. Suohpanterror Facebook site (https://www.face However,, is it the last joint, or the forest, or both, book.com/suohpanterror/) in August 2012.4 At that we are supposed to be mourning here? And first sight, they appeared as simple Sámi appropria- what is the political status of the joint-smoking tions of well-known popular culture images, but Sámi?Ishearesilientfigurewhoissubverting many of them contained also ample references to the dominant society in his own, particular ways? local Sámi politics and micro-history. Examples of Or, is he actually represented as a figure of inertia the early posters include, for instance, a well- and inaction, smoking a trivial joint and wasting known photograph of Bob Marley smoking a his time while the old Sámi forests, vital to his giant marihuana joint, but in Suohpanterror’sinter- People’s wellbeing and culture, are being cut pretation, wearing a handsome, high Sámi men’s down? In summer 2012, there were signs of rap- hat from the Enontekiö area in the North-West prochement between the Sámi Parliament and the (Figure 1). The meanings conveyed by the image, Finnish Ministry of Forestry (the body which was however, are complicated by the underlying text: largely antagonistic to the Sámi in the Nellim case), “Last joint in Saami forrests?” (sic) which, instead in terms that could be seen as far too compromis- of a general statement, actually refers to a particu- ing. As such, the poster can be interpreted also as a lar, ongoing conflict over natural resources at criticism of the Sámi Parliament and its policies, Nellim in the Inari region, where Sámi reindeer particularly since Enontekiö, represented by the herders together with Greenpeace have struggled showy hat connected to the area, is the homeland against the forest industry to prevent the logging of Klemetti Näkkäläjärvi who acted the president of of old forests that are among the last of their kind the Sámi Parliament in Finland that time.6 in Europe, and vital for the life of the reindeer. Another example of early posters (uploaded 30 The conflict, which was particularly intensive August 2012) presents a hazy image of a blinded around the year 2005 and which gained strong male face, whose eyes are bound by the Finnish ethnic undertones also as a conflict between Sámi flag; somewhere behind him, further in the haze, reindeer herders and Finnish labourers aspiring to is the Sámi flag (Figure 2). The image, which is gain a living from forest industry (Vartiainen clearlyanadaptationofJohnPilger’scriticaldoc- 2008), was documented in a film titled Last Yoik umentary film on media and war propaganda The in Saami Forests? (2007) by Hannu Hyvönen.5 War You Don’tSee(2010),7 is accompanied by the Figure 1. By Suohpanterror. Figure 2. By Suohpanterror. JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS & CULTURE 3 text “Propa-Ganda from Fin-Sápmi: The War You appropriate and take over their Sámi identity—has Don’tSee”, undersigned “by Suohpanterror”,and remained largely invisible, and thus unrecognizable, completed by a number of other elements, includ- for the majority of Finns who are not familiar with ing two daub drawings presenting a star and a local micro-histories and ethnic relationships in penis;