The Sami and the Inupiat Finding common grounds in a new world SVF­3903 Kristine Nyborg Master of Philosophy in Visual Cultural Studies Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education Department of Archaeology and Social Anthropology University of Tromsø Spring 2010 2 Thank you To all my informants for helping me make this project happen and for taking me into your lives and sharing all your wonderful thoughts. I am extremely grateful you went on this journey with me. A special warm thanks to my main informant who took me in and guided the way. This would have been impossible without you, and your great spirits and laughter filled my thoughts as I was getting through this process. To supervisor, Bjørn Arntsen, for keeping me on track and being so supportive. And making a mean cup of latte. To National Park Service for helping me with housing. A special thanks to the Center for Sami Studies Strategy Fund for financial support. 3 Abstract This thesis is about the meeting of two indigenous cultures, the Sami and the Inupiat, on the Alaskan tundra more than a hundred years ago. The Sami were brought over by the U.S. government to train the Inupiat in reindeer herding. It is about their adjustment to each other and to the rapidly modernizing world they found themselves a part of, until the term indigenous became a part of everyday speech forty years ago. During this process they gained new identities while holding on to their indigenous ones, keeping a close tie to nature along the way. The thesis is based on a four-month fieldwork in Alaska during the summer of 2009, and is the second part of a Masters project. The first part is a film, Sami footprints in Alaska, which explores how the reindeer has affected the Native Alaskan more than a hundred years after the Reindeer Project of the 1890s. 4 Table of Contents 1. Introduction ...7 Background for the project and interest ...7 Alaska ...9 Nome ...10 The Reindeer Project ...12 2. In the Field ...17 Methods of data collection ...18 Access denied ...19 Access ...21 The People ...22 How I was perceived ...23 Anonymity ...24 3. The Sami and the Inupiaq, together in tradition ...25 Globalization ...25 Self-reflexivity ...28 Sami and Inupiat reflexivity ...29 Claiming rights the western way ...31 4. A Meeting on the Tundra ...33 The Herder ...34 The Reindeer Act of 1937 ...36 Finding identities along the way ...37 Symbiosis ...40 5. From Lapp to Sami, Eskimo to Inupiaq ...43 The Indigenous Politician ...45 The Baiki Journal ...46 Bob the outsider ...47 6. Conclusion ...51 Bibliography ...53 5 Photos Photo 1: Photograph of map in Visual Cultural Studies hallway. Taken by Kristine Nyborg Photos: All photographs were taken by Kristine Nyborg during the summer of 2009. Alaska. 6 1. Introduction Background for the project and interest My grandmother is not a Sami. She is 89, raised in Tromsø, which is in Sapmi, by Sami-speaking parents from Sami families, stands at about 150 cm with squinty eyes, but is not Sami. After I moved to Tromsø I found hard evidence of her Sami heritage and confronted her about this, yet she firmly believes she is not Sami. Even when admitting to being related to well known Samis in Norway, she can’t admit to having any Sami blood flowing through her veins. So my grandmother is not Sami, but I am. I lived most of my adult life in North America, fascinated by how Americans see themselves. Their identities are so diverse, varied in a way I had never experienced in my own country of Norway. I would meet people of Norwegian descent, and they would approach me with an awe and glee because of my heritage, which was difficult for me to comprehend. Since I speak English with a convincible American accent, people assumed I was American. So when I met people and told them I was Norwegian, I often got the response: Me too! After further investigation it turned out more often than not that they indeed were of Norwegian descent, but had never visited Norway, and one person even thought Norway was the capital of Sweden. Despite this, they felt Norwegian. It was where their ancestors came from, and this helped them define themselves in the melting pot of cultures that is the USA. Upon meeting a “real” Norwegian, they felt an even closer tie to my culture, “our” country and me. I found it weird. After moving to Tromsø, and discovering the facts of my own background, I suddenly understood why Americans have a tendency to obsess over their heritage. During my life I’d been this person: white Norwegian girl from an upper-middle class background, and a little more restless than my friends. I never liked this identity much; I didn’t feel like I fit in. But when I discovered my grandmother had a Sami background, it allowed me to place myself in a different box of identities than before. I could now be a white Norwegian girl with an upper-middle class background but descended from the nomadic Sami peoples. This allowed me to explain my adventurous spirit to my friends who didn’t understand my need for traveling around. For them it was sufficient evidence that I was different, and at the end of the day we could all agree on that being the reason. 7 One of my adventures led me to Alaska. In 2007 and 2008 I spent about a year in the wilderness learning, photographing and writing about nature and the people who live with it. I was told several times during my stay of the Sami people who had come through 110 years ago. They were hired by the American government to teach the natives how to herd reindeer, and the reindeer are still being herded to this day, based on the same teachings the Sami brought with them. I was curious to see what the Sami had left behind in Alaska, a place so far away yet so similar to their own home. When it came time to choose fieldwork, the topic of the Sami immigrating to Alaska seemed the obvious choice. By following in the footsteps of the Sami I saw an opportunity to learn more about my grandmother’s heritage and learn about how the Sami had assimilated in Alaska. But as the fieldwork progressed I became more interested in learning how the Sami and introduction of domesticated reindeer could reflect how the Inupiat handled their own identity. As a citizen of the western world I have been privileged in my lifestyle and experiences. I am writing this on an Apple computer designed in California and assembled in China. My tool for writing this is an Apple keyboard made specifically for Norway with Norwegian letters, like these: æ, ø, å. Only I am not using these letters as I am writing this in English, so I have set my computer to read the keyboard like it would an English one, like the one embedded in my laptop. My keyboard is also designed in California, with European directives, but assembled in Malaysia. I am a 32-year-old female Norwegian citizen. I have lived a total of 18 years in my home country, and 13 years in various places of the United States. I have visited more than 15 countries spread over three continents, understand six languages and speak four. My boyfriend lives more than 10 000 km away, is of British descent and carries passports to Canada and New Zealand. I speak with him every day typing in a chat room on the Internet from my phone. On my phone, also designed in California and assembled in China, I read newspapers spanning four continents covering the news for the entire globe. This is my global village, accessible from the comforts of my desk. The project evolved from trying to find the Sami footprints in Alaska into looking at how the Sami and Inupiat met and identified with each other through their common link to the flora and fauna, and further into how the Inupiat today still feel a close connection to the natural world while living in an increasingly globalized world. 8 Alaska Alaska is the largest state in the United States of America. People first started arriving into Alaska from Siberia across the Bering Land Bridge around 10 000 to 25 000 years ago1. Since then, people have populated the area, and after first contact with the western world these people were nicknamed Eskimo. In later years, people around the North Pole have been given the name Inuit, but according to the people of Alaska there are no Inuit in Alaska, but rather a complex, multiethnic society I have chosen to refer to in this project by the names they prefer themselves: Inupiat, Yupik and Siberian Yupik. Traditionally the area has been occupied by the Alaska Natives who lived off the land as hunters and gatherers. Fur-trading Russians colonized Alaska during the 1700s. In 1867 Alaska was bought by the USA from the Russians for 7.2 million dollars, and became an unofficial territory of the States from 1884 to 1959, when it was made its 49th state. Since first contact with the westernized world2 the traditional lifestyles of the Alaska Native have declined. The colonizers moved in, first with churches and schools, then with reindeer, always looking for a way to improve the lifestyles of what they interpreted as primitive people (Chance 1990). What was once a culture of hunters and gatherers have now become more like their adopted culture in the Lower 48 states3.