Friday September 28, 2018

Astri Dankertsen – Associate Professor in Sociology – Astri is of Norwegian and Sami ancestry

 

  1. What I learned from Astri’s presentation.

The Sami people live across 4 countries: Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia

10 Sami languages/dialects – also reestablishing relations between the Sami nations

  • Churches were built in the Sami regions as early as the 12th century
  • 1500-1600 they started to tame these animals into herding groups, becoming the well known reindeer nomads
  • Sweden and Denmark/Norway reached agreement of the state boundaries in 1751
  • The Lapp Codicil of 1751 stated that the Sami could continue with their traditional migratory reindeer herding across the border.
  • Norway and Russia agreed on a boundary in 1826
  • The nomadic Sami use of land, water and natural resources did not establish any formal legal rights according to the Norwegian government. From the 1860’s , the land traditionally used by the Sami, were thus formally decided to be Norwegian State property.
  • At the end of the 1800s teachers were instructed to restrict the use of Sami language
  • To buy land, you needed to have a Norwegian name and speak Norwegian
  • Norwegianization intensified after the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden in 1905, and in the period between the two World Wars the policy was practiced quite aggressively
  • Norwegianization policy a result of increased nationalism during the period of nation-building.
  • Look up Reverend Holm 1907, 16 in Evjen, 2009, 5.
  • Herald Eidheim – “When Ethnic Identity is a Social Stigma” in Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (Fredrik Barth ed.) ‘I knew , of course, that I was on the edges of the Lappish area, but my eyes and ears told me that I was inside a Norwegian fjord community (Eidheim, 1969)
  • Establishment of the Sami Parliament
  • “Sami articulation: Melancholia, loss and reconciliation in a (Northern) Norwegian everyday life” Astri’s doctoral dissertation
  • Opening Sami Cultural centers
  • The revitalization process is complicated in relation to one’s ability to identify as being Sami
  • The affective Turn – attention to the ways in which affect insistently connects and disconnect individuals to larger social experiences and historical events.
  • Melancholy – Reflects
  • A postcolonial perspective – a colonial hierarchy, where the West is viewed as pure and authentic, while the other are always understood as colonized, impure and “inauthentic” (Bhabha 1994)
  • This stereotypical presentation of those cultures who are denied development and change, and those who can change without being understood as “damaged” or “inauthentic”.
  • “Also talking about ‘traditional’ ways of life or ‘traditional’ culture can suggest racist notions of a frozen culture giving rise to false views of authenticity and ‘traditional practices’. This, for its part, denies development and change in Indigenous cultures. Change is natural and inevitable (Kuokkanen 2000; 418)
  • Fragmentation is not an Indigenous project; it is something that we are recovering from. While shifts are occurring in the ways in which Indigenous peoples put ourselves back together again, the greater project is re-centering  Indigenous identities on a larger scale. (Smith 1999; 97)
  • Strong associations between “authentic” indigeneity and rurality, i.e. a pervasive
  • (Kajsa Kemi Gjerpe 2013; 82) – Sami authenticity

2. What I enjoyed or was intrigued by from this presentation:

I enjoyed hearing experience from an international, Indigenous scholar, who is working to decolonize her people’s reality. I was glad she could present to us in English because I wanted to understand everything she was sharing with the audience.

Areas for Improvement?

The presentation slides were done in Prezi, and the transition between slides was disorienting, its more of a stylistic preference, but her slides would have been easier to follow if they were in PowerPoint.

3. Components applicable or relevant to my own master’s research?

I would like to learn more about the Sami style of housing, the Turfut, which bears a minor resemblance to the Secwepemc pit house, at least, on the top half of the housing structure.

  • Built a Turfut (housing structure? Research this?)

I am considering my options for incorporating more of the Sami voice in my own thesis, but this my not be appropriate. I will have to try its incorporation first and then decide on how to include their voice in future anti-oppressive research.

4. How well did the speaker respond to the questions and is there a question you would have asked, given the chance?

I feel that the Norwegian to English language translation may have held back her responses to questions, regardless, she was skilled with her responses and very thoughtful with her replies.

I thanked her for sharing her personal experience as an indigenous scholar and for sharing the voices of her Sami people with us on campus at UNBC during our Orange Shirt Day. National Orange Shirt Day is actually September 30, this year the 30th fell on a Sunday.