Memory Institutions and S¡mi Heritage

"Memory Institutions and Sami Heritage addresses the timely topic of how museums, archives, galleries, festivals etc. deal with their colonial legacy and with an urgent need to revise their role, position and perceptions on cultural heritage. This volume is an invaluable contribution to the ongoing work of understanding the consequences and implications of the decolonial turn for memory institutions in Sapmi and in other Indigenous contexts."

Coppelie Cocq, Professor in Sami Studies and Digital Humanities and Assistant Director of Humlab, Umea University, Sweden

"This is a collection of well-researched case studies hitting the very core of heritage theory by its explorations of the intrinsic power relations and colonial aspects of museum work. Applying these perspectives to Sami culture has a double advantage. It gives insights into Sami cultural expressions as they have moved and been moved from everyday life into museums and other memory institutions, driven by different agendas and agents. Doing so, it also demonstrates the ontological implications of phenomena like restitution, decolonization and repatriation (or rematriation, referring critically to the gendered concepts of nation and fatherland). At the same time, the book is an important contribution to memory and museum studies more generally, showing the conceptual complexities as well as the practical challenges that follow from shifting the focus from artifacts to agents or from heritage to heirs to autonomous Sami agency."

Anne Eriksen, Professor of Cultural History, IKOS, University of Oslo, Norway

"I recommend this book highly for its enlightening presentation of new and thought-provoking perspectives on past and contemporary presentations of indigenous Sami culture in memory institutions and beyond. Understood as ongoing processes of change in a decolonizing perspective, the contexts of the analyzed examples range from museums to festivals, music, art, and tourism. Where earlier power imbalances caused appropriation and misrepresentations of their culture, today's presenters have to establish new communicative positions and new ways of cooperating with indigenous groups. To readers involved in any presentations of Sami heritage the book would be inspirational, and would bring greater understanding to the general, interested audience."

Stein R. Mathisen, Professor Emeritus, Department of Tourism & Northern Studies, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Norway

"One of the most striking features of this insightful collection of essays is the importance accorded to introducing, explaining and applying Sami terminology, concepts, and epistemologies as tools to understand historical and contemporary dynamics pertaining to Sami Memory and Cultural Heritage. This approach not only imparts meaning and substance to the processes of Sami decolonization and (re)appropriation, but also discloses new, exciting theoretical, methodological and practice-based perspectives on the work of museums and memory institutions in a postcolonial world - in Sami, Indigenous, and non-Indigenous contexts alike."

Marzia Varutti, Marie Sklodowska Curie research fellow, Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Switzerland