Sami National Day

Happy Sámi National Day! Lihkku beaiviin!

/ Julie Whitehorn

Below, a new music video and links to help you celebrate all month long. Enjoy!

Arctic Highways. This Facebook live event includes remarks by the Ambassador of Sweden to the United States, Karin Olofsdotter, a special presentation of the exhibition “Arctic Highways,” interviews with the artists, and performances (Sara Ajnnak) from City Hall in Stockholm, Sweden. 3 pm, February 6, free.

VILDÁ in concert streaming February 6 through February 17, free.

Älven min vän (The River My Friend) film, streaming online February 10, 2 pm PST, free. A portrait of the lives of four Sámi women and their relationship to the Lule River in Sweden. The film shows the consequences of the forced resettlement of Sámi people who were displaced from their land because of the construction of river dams and were alienated from their indigenous culture and way of life (such as reindeer husbandry, clothing, language, food and music). At the same time, the film shows the deep relationship between the women and the river. Register for this free event and receive a link to the movie. Then join the Zoom event to meet the director Hannah Ambühl.

Nordic Spirits Second Friday: Are You What You Wear? on Friday, February 11, 7:30 p.m. PT, free. A virtual presentation presented by Prof. Thomas DuBois of University of Wisconsin-Madison to learn about Sámi traditional dress. Free, registration required.

Nordiska’s Book Club: Black Fox Thursday, February 24, 6 pm PT, free. Port Townsend author Barbara Sjoholm’s book Black Fox: A Life of Emilie Demant Hatt, Artist and Ethnographer is the subject of this month’s book club by the Nordiska shop in Poulsbo. Though not Sámi herself, Emilie Demant Hatt became closely acquainted with a variety of Sámi cultures during her travels in Sápmi in the early 1900s. Free.

Nordic Lights Film Festival online February 25 – March 5 (tickets required). Included are these short films:

  • Indigenous Police/Koftepolitiet | Egil Pedersen | Norway | 2021 | 12 minutes Koftepolitiet is a Sámi short film told with humor and political sting. It is an identity satire about how people, both the Sámi and the majority population, consciously and unconsciously define what is the “right” way to be Sámi.
  • Svonni vs the Swedish Tax Agency/ Svonni vs Skatteverket | Maria Fredriksson | Sweden/Sapmi | 5 minutes A Sámi woman tries to convince the Swedish Tax Agency that she has the right to make a tax deduction for the purchase of a dog. Why can’t the Swedish authorities understand that Rikke is a herding tool and not a pet? A humorous short documentary about cultural clashes and the struggle to practice Sámi culture in today’s Sweden.

Antiphony Book Discussion, online February 26, 3 pm PT, Free) The Swedish American Museum in Chicago, Illinois, hosts a book club that reads a wide range of books from the Nordic countries. Antiphony by Laila Stien (translated from the Norwegian by John Weinstock) is a novel about a woman who goes to Northern Norway and becomes acquainted with three generations of Sámi women.

Standing Rock, 2016

UPDATE!

If you have roots in northern Sweden, don’t miss this lovely Sámi Day program. The trusting, upturned faces of the children, filmed at the Sámeskola in Gällivare, brought tears to my eyes and a familiar mix of joy and grief. Some of their ancestors and mine undoubtedly attended “lappskola” together in the village, in a darker age (it ran from 1756 to 1912). The priest Lars Solomon Engelmark complained in 1804 that my morfars farfar Erkki (who was somewhere between the ages of 6 and 11) was “mindre beskedlig i sitt uppträdande,” poorly behaved. A generation later, the priest Lars Levi Laestadius recorded the expense of educating Erkki’s child: “5 riksdaler.” The family soon moved to Tärendö, where my grandfather was born. If like me you can’t parse the Swedish subtitles, skip to 23:24 for a greeting from the Sámediggi (the handsome guy in black is my cousin Frederik Österling), then stay tuned for the singer Astrid Lindstrand Tuorda (who some of you will remember from NaNu 2019 in Seattle, when she and her dad Tor joiked so powerfully at the campfire). Her rendition of the Sámi anthem is simple, soft, and pure, like snow falling on Dundret. Enjoy. The light is returning.

Celebrate Sámi Day

/ Julie Whitehorn / Leave a comment

Celebrated every February 6 since 1993, Sámi National Day (Sámi Álbmotbeaivi) commemorates the first international, pan-Sámi organizational meeting held in Trondheim in 1917, considered the beginning of the Sámi rights movement.

It will be celebrated locally from 4 pm to 8 pm this coming Thursday at Pacific Lutheran University’s Scandinavian Cultural Center in Tacoma. (See link for directions.)

Sámi National Day (Sámi Álbmotbeaivi)
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Scandinavian Cultural Center, PLU, Tacoma

4 pm Opening and Anthem
4:30 pm Exhibit Tour
5 pm Concert by Risten Anine Gaup
6:15 pm Sámi Documentaries

The celebration will open with welcoming remarks and the singing of the Sámi national anthem, followed by a guided tour of the new Sámi exhibit and time for refreshments and socializing. The talented Sámi joiker Risten Anine Gaup (above) will perform around 5 p.m. Two short documentaries will be screened beginning around 6:15 pm, followed by a short discussion.

Props to PLU professor Troy Storfjell and the Scandinavian Cultural Center for arranging the celebration. I plan to be there and hope it is well-attended!

Here is a taste of Sámi music and art for those unable to attend. For many outside Scandinavia, their first time hearing joik, the long suppressed folk music of the Sami, was when Nils-Aslak Valkeapää (1943-2001) performed at the 1994 Lilyhammer Olympics. His friend the Sámi scholar Harald Gaski said “it is in the totality of his expression that you understand Nils-Aslak best.” Listen to his haunting joik from “The Sun, My Father” here as you contemplate the paintings below.

In describing Valkeapää’s poetry (the man was a creative force!), Gaski mentions parallels to Chief Seattle’s apocryphal but famous speech of 1854 in which he asks rhetorically: “How can you sell or buy the air? If we do not own its freshness and the glimmer in the water, how then can the White man buy it from us?”

It’s a question that haunts, given the continued ravaging of resources in the name of profit, in Sapmi and everywhere. But there is hope. The indigenous worldview or cosmology that prioritizes beauty, balance, and harmony over individualism, competition, and materialism never went away and still offers a future on this planet. I love the abstract tension in these two paintings by Valkeapää and the way they suggest both the power of nature and lightness in which the people and animals appear on the land.

Lihkku Sámi Álbmotbeivviin (Happy Sámi National Day!), wherever you find yourself.

Celebrate Sámi National Day on Wed, Feb. 6th at PLU

/ Julie Whitehorn / Leave a comment

On February 6th, Sámi National Day, or Sámi People’s Day (Sámi Álbmotbeaivi), is celebrated throughout Sápmi, the land of the Indigenous Sámi in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. The celebration commemorates the first international, pan-Sámi organizational meeting held in Trondheim in 1917, marking the beginning of the Sámi rights movement. Sámi Álbmotbeaivi has been celebrated since 1993. This year, on its 20th anniversary, Pacific Lutheran University and the Scandinavian Cultural Center will celebrate the day for the first time.

Events are free and open to the public. Several members of our Pacific Sámi Searvi will attend and lead the singing of the Sámi national anthem. Please join us! (Get directions.)

Schedule:

  • 2:30 pm Refreshments and a brief talk by Professor Troy Storfjell
  • 2:40 pm Singing of the Sámi anthem (new English version!)
  • 3 pm The one-hour documentary Herdswoman (in Swedish and Sámi with English subtitles). 
  • 4 pm Panel-led discussion of the film
  • 7 pm Sámi Professor Harald Gaski will present this year’s Bjug Harstad Memorial Lecture, titled “Celebrating the Return of the Sun and the Recognition of a People: The Sami National Day in the Context of Myth and Poetics.” Gaski will explain why the Sámi consider themselves the descendents of the sun, and provide some background for the selection of February 6 for the Sámi National Day. He will also show how myths have played an important role in the work of Sámi multi-media artist Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, setting his work in an international Indigenous context. (Harald Gaski is Associate Professor of Sámi Literature at the University of Tromsø in Norway, and an internationally well-known expert on Sámi literature and culture, and a leading researcher in the emerging field of indigenous methodologies.)