Sami Media and Indigenous Agency in the Arctic North

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.