Knowing about genealogies is a vital part of the Sámi cultural heritage, the conceptualization of history and Sámi identity. Genealogy in general traces lineages of kin relationships back in time. In Sámi, there is no one single term for genealogy, as for example whakapapa in Maori, probably because the traditional Sámi conceptualization of kinship relations is not linear, but instead covers an extensive network of multiplex relationships between ancestors referred to by the collective noun máttut (in the plural) in Sámi.3 The Sámi understanding of a genealogy is therefore more like a seine fishing net with hundreds of important net cells, covering all the lineages of the extended families, in a holistic multilevel totality with many branches.
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