Mid Sweden University

This article is a Sámi feminist analysis of large-scale resource extraction in Sábme, the transnational Sámi territory spanning northern Fenno-Scandinavia and the Murmansk peninsula. Specifically, it centers on the mining of Indigenous land within the borders of the Swedish nation-state to explore the knowledge evolving from Sámi feminists engaged in the anti-mining struggle. Here, I argue that Indigenous epistemes—that is, the foregrounding of relationality and interdependency between land, humans, nonhuman beings, and the natural environment—are foundational to the research participants’ struggles against mining in Sábme. From within a Sámi knowledge system, mining entails fracturing the relational web of connection. Consequently, mining represents a multigenerational threat against the survival of Sámi body lands and lifeworlds.

Are feminist coalitions magical enough to survive and endure while questioning and shaking the colonial/racist foundations of Swedish academic knowledge production and the overall Swedish society? Can feminist bridging and collective writing remain a magical process even when grappling with diffi cult ex-periences and memories of Othering and racialization? This is a creatively and collectively written article on feminist coalition building, and its importance in thinking, articulating and deconstructing race, racial-ization and racist structures. More than two years ago, seven interdisciplinary gender studies scholars of mixed ethnic and racial origins, came together to explore our differently situated experiences of disidenti-fying with Swedish academia and society in a collective we call Loving Coalitions (capital initials). Against the background of Swedish exceptionalism, historical amnesia of Sweden’s colonial past and present, and the deafening silence on Swedish whiteness and racism, we are sharing our poems, letters, texts and testimonies of racist interactions in Swedish academia and society. While doing so, we discuss how moving away from conventional ways of doing research and experimenting with creative methodological alternatives allow us to acknowledge and embrace our different life backgrounds and academic trajecto-ries as a mode of knowledge production. We hope and believe that our experiences, reflections and ways to resist racism and Othering in Sweden and Swedish academia through alternative coalition building, based on mutual care and love, can be relevant in a Danish context as well.

Detta kapitel visar hur svensk film bidragit till produktionen av samerna som svenskarnas primitiva ”andre”. Med hjälp av postkoloniala och genusvetenskapliga redskap undersöker kapitlet hur svensk film visualiserat, och samtidigt rasifierat, samer dels genom att använda det specifika bildspråk som Tobing Rony benämner ”ethnographic spectacle”, och dels genom en svensk version av det som kallats ”blackface cinema”, där samiska rollfigurer med agens företrädesvis spelas av svenska skådespelare. Den tidiga svenska filmen om Sápmi diskuteras också i förhållande till den raskartläggning som Herman Lundborg bedrev i Sverige och i Sápmi vid denna tidpunkt. Kapitlet avslutas med en studie av hur Amanda Kernell’s film Sameblod (2016) bryter mot denna tradition genom att rollbesätta på nya sätt, genom att konsekvent bryta med tidigare berättar-, bild- och scenografikonventioner, och genom belysa den rasbiologiska kartläggningen av samerna. I denna analys använder sig kapitlet av dekolonial teori för att visa hur Sameblod aktivt nedmoterar de rasiska strukturer och det latenta våld som gav riktning till tidigare film om samer.

This dissertation explores, illuminates, and analyses Sámi feminist knowledges, conceptualised as diverse and fluid feminist knowledges that both arise within and create Sámi realities. Centrally, it contributes to and exemplifies Sámi inquiry and conversations where different people continuously create and re-create Sámi feminisms in various contexts. This study focuses on feminist articulations and dialogue from a Sámi context, Sámi feminist theoretical, epistemic, and methodological approaches, and Sámi feminist contributions to gender studies, especially in the Swedish context. First, the study contributes to reworking hegemonic gender studies in Sweden. For example, it discusses Sámi feminist erasure in Swedish feminist scholarship, gendered settler colonialism, and the intersections of gender and Indigeneity. In dialogue with previous Sámi feminist scholarship and global Indigenous feminist theories, the author argues that gendered settler colonialism against the Sámi people manifests and continues to manifest in several ways. These manifestations include gendered colonial law, the gendered impact on Sámi economies, gendered violence and its colonial intersections, the interplay of gender and religion, and gendered and sexualised epistemicide. Second, the study foregrounds a shift in the analysis of gender within Indigenous studies from the tradition’s margins to the centre. For example, it foregrounds Indigenous and Sámi feminist contributions to understandings and enactments of decolonisation and resurgence – the critical examination and dismantling of colonial structures of power and a (re)imagination and (re)creation of the world grounded in Indigenous experiences and world-making practices. Contrary to being a divisive force in the struggle against settler colonial dispossession, the author conceptualises Sámi feminisms as integral to inclusive processes of decolonisation and resurgence. By exploring the visions and strengths of Sámi feminisms, the dissertation centres on the contributions of Sámi feminisms to Indigenous healing, regeneration, and thriving. Third, the study contributes to feminist epistemologies and methodologies. Significantly, it foregrounds Indigenous and Sámi epistemes as relational, interconnected, and response-able ways of knowing, being, and doing beyond colonial world-making practices. To conceptualise Sámi feminist inquiry in a way that resonates with Indigenous epistemes, it introduces the conceptualisation of related knowledges. Furthermore, the study explores and develops Sámi feminist methodologies using three approaches: writing-weaving, learning in conversations, and mujttalit – storytelling and remembering. Finally, the study contributes to the broader scholarly project of developing an analysis of Nordic colonialisms, especially on the settler colonial impact on Sámi life-worlds. The main body of the dissertation comprises an introductory essay and seven articles, including individually written and co-authored texts.

This article centres upon embodied and localised stories in Sábme. It suggests that such narratives may express diversity, difference, and complexity. As such, they may contribute to inclusive decolonial processes and knowledge production. Drawing upon Indigenous worldviews and ways of knowing, the article explores the author’s Sámi and Tornedalian family histories within a settler-colonial structure and assimilatory policies towards minorities. Specifically, the context is the interrelated mining towns of Gällivare and Malmberget. Analytical themes are loss, silences, and dispossession but also decolonial resistance and (re)imagination.

Denna artikel fokuserar på förkroppsligade och lokaliserade berättelser i Sábme. Dessa slags berättelser föreslås kunna uttrycka mångfald, skillnad och komplexitet och därigenom bidra till inkluderande dekoloniala processer och kunskapsproduktion. Med stöd i urfolks världsbilder och former för vetande utforskas författarens samiska och tornedalska familjehistorier mot bakgrund av en bosättarkolonial struktur och assimilationspolitik mot minoriteter. Det specifika sammanhanget är de sammanlänkade gruvstäderna Gällivare och Malmberget. Analytiska teman är förlust, tystnad och fråntagande men också dekolonialt motstånd och (åter)skapande.