Sápmi tales

Resistance art

On display at the 59th La Biennale di Venezia, as part of the exhibition “Il Latte dei Sogni – Milk of dreams”, are works by Britta Marakatt-Labba. The classical sculpture Brickhouse, by Simone Leigh, greets you as you enter the exhibition venue. But barely metres behind Brickhouse, hang Britta’s works. It feels like pausing fo a breath of fresh air. It is austere, unpretentious and strongly symbolic. Britta’s stylistic resistance art, embroidered one careful stitch at a time, is like slow-motion graffiti. People stop in their tracks. They absorb and are absorbed. Approaching the art, they examine the style of the work at close range. Moving a few steps back, they take it all in.

In Badje Sohppar, in the Municipality of Kiruna, Britta has been creating resistance art for more than 40 years. Only in recent years has she gained wider recognition in the art world. Her work Historjá, in the collection of the Arctic University of Norway, in Tromsø, is a 24-metre-long embroidered epic of Sámi history and beliefs. The artwork caused a sensation at the Documenta 14 exhibition, in Kassel, in 2017 and has been compared to the Bayeux Tapestry, another embroidered encyclopaedia. Historjá is also the title of an award-winning documentary about Britta, by Thomas Jackson. All of a sudden, it is apparent why the world’s most significant art show, has allowed her work to become part of the greater story.

Symbolic value

Outside of Krog Lokal in Jåhkåmåhkke, where we eat lunch one day, stands one of Sunna’s works. It is a reminder that the ILO Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention No.169 was never ratified by the Swedish state. The symbolic value is always recurrent in the Sámi context. It is still a place where the struggle between origins and colonial power persists. Quite simply, the conflict of land-use issues, reindeer grazing lands versus raw materials, becomes increasingly clearer in the everyday lives of the Sámi people.

“Of course, the Biennale was important for me. But I believe it was equally important for the Nordic pavillion.”

The work Illegal Spirits of Sápmi, which Anders created in Venice in 2023, has been purchased by Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Since before the museum carries other work of Anders. I ask him if  he is always so ‘angry’. He laughs and says:

“I am seldom angry. On the contrary, actually. Imagine being able to speak all the world’s languages without saying a sound. To reach people’s hearts first and then their consciousness. The anger you are carrying suddenly finds a way to emerge, but in a more creative form, stronger than iron. Art is that.”

Complexity

The Sámi tradition is largely one of oral history. Sámi, as a written language, did not emerge until the 1950s. Early on, there was nothing written to fall back on; written historical accounts were nothing but interpretations about the Sámi but they were not by the Sámi. There have been exceptions, though almost always at the discretion of church or state. Naturally, this has impacted everyone’s chances for learning and understanding. 

Even if you live here, in the middle of Sápmi, it’s quite possible that you know the names of more indigenous peoples of North America than you know the names of samebyar (reindeer husbandry associations) in your own region. In school you may never have been taught about forced relocation or assimilation, even if you are well aware that some of your classmates’ forbears had to go through all of that. And to complicate things even more, that there is a common Sámi story is never straightforward; instead, there is one story for every individual who tells it. This is complex, in every way that life is complex. Britta Marakatt-Labba says: 

“It’s double, in some way. In Kiruna, when I went to the nomad school, I was just a ‘Lappdjävel’. Something undesirable. In Gothenburg, when I studied art and design at Konstindustriskolan, I was ‘the Sámi’. My origin was exotic and exciting.” 

Exotic and exciting

And, for outsiders, it is sometimes difficult not to focus our attention on the exotic and exciting. In the colourful stories, the colours and designs of garments reveal a person’s origins. It is a place where simple artefacts, utility items such as knives, become incomparable works of art. How fascinating it is when everyday, practical items such as bootlaces are also part of a story. 

The obviously colourful and the pride and beauty implicit in the Sámi story often take second place behind stories of struggle and resistance in today’s media stream. And it is also often difficult for an outsider to comprehend the struggle and anguish that are never very far away in the day-to-day life. Naturally, you have no special emotional attachment to the steak you pick up at your grocery store. But if you have marked the ear of a reindeer calf, and then followed the animal across the grazing lands for the rest of its life, things are different.  

To that, add the historical Christianisation and Swedification of a people whose identity was thought to be of little value. Then, add the outcomes of modern forestry practice, hydroelectric power development, urban development and climate change, and you will begin to understand the sense of vulnerability that these works of art embody, whether they be artefacts, songs or writings. The nationally and internationally award-winning film Sameblod, by Amanda Kernell, exposes this era of racial biology and cultural assault. We have all been young and occasionally lost, and young people have always wondered what they will be when they grow up. But in Kernell’s film this longing also becomes a longing to obliterate one’s identity, and a disdain for one’s origins and history.

Crows

Britta Marakatt-Labba began her career as an artist during the Alta uprising in Norway. It took many years to resolve the conflict; just as her embroideries take many years to create. In 1981, when Britta completed her studies at the University of Gothenburg School of Design and Crafts (HDK), she journeyed to Alta to join the protesters and was arrested. Of course, it could have been worse. The Norwegian government wanted to send in the military against the demonstrators, but the defence minister, Thorvald Stoltenberg, threatened to resign if that happened. One of Britta’s first works, Gárjat (The Crows), is from that time. In Sámi mythology the crow represents the authoritarian power, something that grabs things for itself. When the crows flew in over the demonstrators in Alta, they were transformed into policemen. 

The protests had to do with grazing lands, the flooding of communities for hydropower projects, the migratory salmon, etcetera. The importance of biological diversity, as expressed in the Rio Convention, wasn’t acknowledged until several decades later. And more than 40 years later, at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, in 2023, world leaders spoke of the importance of including indigenous peoples in corporate decision-making. Simply daring to hurry a bit more slowly. One third of the world comprises areas that have traditionally been inhabited by indigenous peoples or local communities. The surprising thing here is that 91% of this land shows good or very good quality in terms of ecology and biology. It could be as simple as this: perhaps people who live with nature understand its value. Maybe we can all learn from this.    

Our place on Earth

Ædean means ground or land in the old Sámi language. And the land is what it’s all about. Following the reindeer migration is the creation story of the indigenous Sámi people. This nomadic lifestyle is the foundation of the very existence of the reindeer herding culture, migrating between summer and winter grazing lands, but also of the land-use – the Sámi hunting grounds and fishing waters for subsistence. 

Author Linnea Axelsson’s epic Ædnan won her the August Prize in 2018. A bit of world history captured in 762 pages of prose. Here, we follow two Sámi families through the eyes of three generations in a story that is almost incomprehensible; because subjects like skull measurements, closed borders and the flooding of ancestral lands are seldom easily digested. But Ædnan is also an interpreter for the landscape and the surrounding life: the lay of the land. 

While the book Ædnan is a nearly 800-page-long epic, the sequel Magnificat, published in 2022, feels like a 150-page pamphlet. The story in Magnificat takes place in Paris. Even here, the story is about home, about our place on Earth. At the end of the book, everyday racism rears its ugly head once again when, at a simple dinner gathering, the principal character is described as belonging to: “a group of people who cling to a few local customs and had their reactionary ideas legitimised by the state”. 

Explicit policies

In 2023 Ann-Helén Læstadius will release a new book, Straff, about the nomad-school system. If Stöld felt like a punch in the face, then the new book, Straff, will knock the wind out of you. The nomad schools were a form of institutionalised assimilation. Swedification was explicit policy. Sámi children were sent to faraway residential schools; sometimes as far as from a sameby in Härjedalen in southern Sápmi to Gällivare. Southern Sámi children could not speak the northern Sámi language and none of them could speak Swedish, so distrust flourished.

Finally: the book Herrarna satte oss hit (The masters put us here), by Elin Anna Labba, from Giron (Kiruna), is also well worth mentioning in this context. While, for example, Ædnan, Sameblod and Historja are reaching a wider audience, owing to their artistic merit, Elin Anna’s historical account is making an impact in a different way.

Elin Anna writes: “Our book is the sign that nobody posted, the chapter that never fit into the history textbooks”. A book about the forced relocation of the Sámi people is not easy to digest. And, although this has had such a profound effect on the lives of people today, surprisingly little is said about it. In an interview with the host of Swedish Television’s programme, Babel, Elin Anna elaborates on this:

“This [forced relocation], with so much racism and nationalism, is not a particularly pleasant chapter in the history of Sápmi. It happened concurrently with racial biology and language policy. What started it was the dissolution of the Nordic Union. When Norway became a country in its own right”.

Imaginary borders

The dissolution of the union in 1905, which brought about the establishment of a border between Norway and Sweden, made it impossible for the Sámi to move with their herds between the summer and winter lands as they had done for generations. An ‘imaginary’ border, drawn through nature, put a stop to freedom of movement for reindeer as well as the Sámi. 

Elin Anna worked on the book for seven years. When asked what it was like to dig through her own family history in the archives of the State Institute for Racial Biology, and to do hundreds of interviews with people who had been forced to leave their homes and endure separation from their families, she replies: 

“But oddly enough, it has been rather enjoyable, since we have discussed a lot of other things as well. We’ve talked about everyday life, relationships, parting with boyfriends and finding new ones… so much of it has been wonderful.” 

One thing that makes the book so gripping is that, in the Swedish translation, many Sámi words have not been translated. Much of it can be understood in context; other parts may have to be googled. However, all of the jojks included in the book have been written only in Sámi. 

Culture programme Babel’s host Jessika Gedin, at Swedish Television, summarizes it best when she says: 

“Somehow, it’s up to me, as a reader, to understand; and not up to the Sámi to explain.”