Digital media-GIFs, films, TED Talks, tweets, and more-have become integral to daily life and, unsurprisingly, to Indigenous people's strategies for addressing the historical and ongoing effects of colonization. In Sami Media and Indigenous Agency in the Arctic North, Thomas DuBois and Coppelie Cocq examine how Sami people of Norway, Finland, and Sweden use media to advance a social, cultural, and political agenda anchored in notions of cultural continuity and self-determination. Beginning in the 1970s, Sami have used Sami-language media-including commercially produced musical recordings, feature and documentary films, books of literature and poetry, and magazines-to communicate a sense of identity both within the Sami community and within broader Nordic and international arenas.
In more contemporary contexts-from YouTube music videos that combine rock and joik (a traditional Sami musical genre) to Twitter hashtags that publicize protests against mining projects in Sami lands-Sami activists, artists, and cultural workers have used the media to undo layers of ignorance surrounding Sami livelihoods and rights to self-determination. Downloadable songs, music festivals, films, videos, social media posts, images, and tweets are just some of the diverse media through which Sami activists transform how Nordic majority populations view and understand Sami minority communities and, more globally, how modern states regard and treat Indigenous populations.
About the Author :
Thomas A. DuBois is the Halls-Bascom Professor of Scandinavian Studies, Folklore, and Religious Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Among his previous works is his recent Sacred to the Touch: Nordic and Baltic Religious Wood Carving. Coppélie Cocq is professor of European ethnology at the University of Helsinki, Finland, specializing in Sámi studies. Among her previous publications are Revoicing Sámi Narratives: North Sámi Storytelling at the Turn of the Twentieth Century and the coedited volume Perspectives in Indigenous Writing and Literacies.
Review :
"[M]asterful and uplifting study... Highly recommended for indigenous scholars and activists, as well as students of modern social media."
"Cocq and DuBois offer an artist-centered account of Sámi agency within Sámi media products—countering implicitly the many stereotypes of the newness of Indigenous media use and activist traditions. The work is of value for both crafting a Sámi activist counter-history that “talks back” to the empire through its own media platforms, and in its close readings of numerous multimedia art works of prominent Sámi artists."
"[M]arks the arrival of Sámi -specific studies in new media and communication."
"Centering and normalization of Sámi word-presence as well as their application to the conceptual flow of the book is an important but subtle feature of the decolonizing knowledge-work the authors seek to amplify through this book. The effect is one that invites readers to engage with these words as metaphors in ways that can affirm the value of Indigenous knowledge itself."
