Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Today we had the opportunity to have a lot of dialogue with a Sami man named Nils-Gustav Blind. He greeted us at 10 am, reindeer in hand, and took us for a short walk into a snowy park area. This reindeer was rather majestic, with completely white fur, even on his antlers, and he was much larger than either of the two reindeer that we met with Annamarja. He was a little bit feisty, and we all felt a bit apprehensive when he decided to try to push Eric over with his antlers, but he calmed down once he was hitched up to the sledge. Several of us got a turn to ride on the sledge as we were pulled around in a circle by the reindeer, and I can say that I personally found it very fun! But I was also glad just to have another interaction with a reindeer and learn a little bit more about how they act and react to things.

After this adventure with the reindeer, Nils-Gustav set to work aptly building a fire with the birch logs he had brought, and then he spoke to us about many aspects of being a Sami person and the Sami culture. This conversation continued in our classroom after lunch, and Nils-Gustav seemed very eager to share some of his many interesting perspectives. I will certainly not be able to recreate any of that conversation here, and I'm sure there are many topics I am leaving out, but one theme that I did take note of was location/environment. When Nils-Gustav spoke about Sami identity, what I understood to be most important was a certain way of living and thinking. The Sami way of living with the land has, of course, changed and adapted over hundreds of years, but there is still a very important connection to nature, and more especially a sense about saving and conserving natural resources. The Sami way of life practices a very conscious restriction of how much one takes away from nature at a time. For example, Nils-Gustav spoke about the geese that used to be abundant in the forests around Jokkmokk because the Sami were careful not to hunt too many at a time, but which are now much more scarce. It seemed to me that Nils-Gustav connected this way of thinking with the environment of the area, because he said that anyone living in the area of Jokkmokk could live like a Sami and could almost be Sami, although not quite. He also expressed that this mindset of protecting nature that comes with growing up in this area is part of the reason that reindeer herding should be exclusive to the Sami, since, as he said, someone who grew up in Stockholm, for example, would consider the reindeer herding occupation as a venue for making money rather than as a true lifestyle in conjunction with nature, and would therefore take too much at once. The importance of location/environment was also present in his political views, which seemed to especially focus on ownership of land. Nils-Gustav believes that the Sami as a collective should be the true owners of the land, rather than the state or individual companies, because the Sami are indigenous to the area. He considers the Swedish people basically colonizers of the land that should belong to the Sami so that they can continue their way of life. I personally found this perspective on the land very interesting because it includes concepts that we have heard about earlier on this trip, but was also different from some of the impressions I got from other Sami we have spoken to. I also really liked what Nils-Gustav said about they way that culture has to be adaptive in order to endure, and that the Sami culture has long interacted with all the cultures around it and brought in pieces of other cultures by giving them a Sami twist, as well as shared things with the other cultures of Scandinavia. He seemed quite optimistic that Sami culture will still remain in the future, though he said that he has no idea what it might look like in future generations. I invite anyone else to share their thoughts about anything else we discussed today and I'll try to post a few pictures of our reindeer rides!