Sami Photographic Identity

8/3/2019 Sami Photographic Identity

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sami-photographic-identity 1/26

How is Sami post-colonial identity negotiated through photographic images? A

comparison between the photography of Jorma Puranen and of Olga Røe.

Candidate number: 426480

Contents

1 Introduction 2

1.1 The Sami . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

2 Sami in Images 9

2.1 Jorma Puranen - “Imaginary Homecoming” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

2.2 Ola Røe – “Sami Diversities in the Turn of the Millennium” . . . . . . . . . 17

3 Conclusion 22

List of Figures

1 David Alfaro Siqueiros - ‘Ethnography’ (Friendsofart, 2011) . . . . . . . . . . 9

2 Sami Man as presented by Norwegian Tourist Board (Visitnorway, 2011) . . 11

3 Sami Protest (Galdu, 2011) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

4 Faces in Snow (Puranen and Edwards, 1999) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

5 Faces on Birch Trees (Puranen and Edwards, 1999) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

6 Transcript with Images (Røe, 2011) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

7 Family Scenes (Røe, 2011) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 Main Page (Røe, 2011) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

9 Youth (Røe, 2011) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

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1 Introduction

“Despite countless confusions to the contrary, it has been understood since the time of Aristo-

tle that forms of cultural expression, both ‘artistic’ and otherwise. . . do not reproduce reality

itself; rather, in their various ways. . . each o ff er something which stands for an aspect of

reality” (Gidley, 1992).

Photographic representation in the 21st century is one of the most powerful ways that

identities are fashioned, both through acts of self-representation and via representations

made by others. What Gidley fails to recognise here is the simultaneous existence of many

‘realities’ – with representations both depicting and at the same time constructing diff erent

realities. The Sami people of Lapland, as represented in photography, inhabit parallel and

seemingly opposed realities. The visual representations of Sami people in indigenous pho-

tography, journalistic photography, photography for the tourism industry and contemporary

artistic photography in their own way constitute ‘realities’ both for Sami people and for

other consumers of the images. However the realities depicted by the diff erent genres vary

greatly.

In this essay I will critique the work of Finnish photographer Jorma Puranen and Nor-

wegian Sami photographer and activist Ola Røe and question the relationship between pho-

tography and Sami identity in these specific cases. I will draw upon critical photographic

and post-colonial theory to draw comparisons between the construction of ‘indigenousness’

in contemporary political settings and the parallel construction of visual Sami identity via

contemporary photographic practice. I will argue that the presentation of an identity which

is limited and ‘fixed’ and which ignores the experiences of those who do not fit within the

stereotypical image of a Sami indigenous person excludes a more nuanced understanding of

Sami identity but this can prove useful in certain contexts. Voices that do not ‘fit’ with an

archetypical image of traditional Sami are also represented photographically, however their

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remit is often far smaller than the spread of the romanticised, exoticised image. I demon-

strate that photography has the potential to contribute to the deconstruction of stereotypical

assumptions and be a medium for the assertion of alternative views, however it is difficult

to change the visual allegories by which the Sami are generally known. I will begin with

an outline of the present day Sami situation with regards to indigenous rights. Then I will

briefly set the scene of Sami representation in tourist literature and indigenous responses to

such representation. Then I will progress to my reading of Puranen’s and Røe’s work. I will

investigate how these specific photographic works encapsulate diff erent notions of the Sami

as historical people ‘of the land’ who necessarily exist in the landscape and are as much a

part of it as the birch trees and lakes but who also possess modern identities and often live

a far less exotic life than is imagined by outsiders.

Post-colonialism seeks to critique the often negative eff ects of colonialism on cultures

and its theories are equally applicable to indigenous cultures which may not have been

‘officially colonised’ but that have suff ered subjugation by dominating cultural systems.

Such is the case with the Sami people - Europe’s only indigenous group (recognised as such

by the United Nations). The Sami traditionally live in a sparsely populated region known

as Sampi which is spread across Northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula

of Russia and together they number about 80-95,000 individuals (with a majority living in

Norway), however an exact figure is difficult to count (Henriksen, 2008). They see themselves

as possessing long-standing roots in this territory and regard other inhabitants as settlers

(Aikio et al., 1994, p.84). During the nineteenth and twentieth century the Sami faced

intense pressures of cultural assimilation and subjugation, mainly through the powers of the

church and through state education policies. In Norway the use of Sami language in schoolswas eff ectively banned until the late 1960s (Henriksen, 2008).

American Sami scholar Rauna Kuokkanen questions why the Sami today have not reached

greater degrees of self-determination when they have enjoyed comparably more advantages

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in education and access to international platforms than other indigenous groups for example

in Canada and New Zealand (Kuokkanen, 2009). She argues that the answer may lie in the

quiet and conservative nature of Sami resistance to cultural assimilation – through acts of

withdrawal and diplomacy – combined with the difficult task of translating such opposition

into a visible and public discourse. She references Jull’s (1995, p.109) argument that ‘there

is no change in policy without changing publication perceptions’ (Kuokkanen, 2006). Visual

media, in particular photography, has the potential to influence public perception of the S ami

and also aff ects self-perception. Images presented of Sami are often essentialising, bordering

of stereotyping, and therefore can be extremely restrictive. There are dangers associated with

the stereotype for people negotiating post-colonial situations around the world. The stories

that are told (or not told) about a people can powerfully aff ect a culture and influence the

desire of individuals to express a particular identity. Photographs of indigenous people build

visual narratives with either constructive or destructive implications - groups whom have

experienced explicit cultural attack are especially vulnerable to the eff ects of photographic

representation, both positive and negative.

‘Identity’ can be classified as a sense of belonging to a group or conforming to an ideal

(Hall and Du Gay, 1996), and showing allegiance to people of the same identity. Theories

of identity have proved problematic, with critics dismissing the idea of a fundamental core

identity, in favour of a more fluid model. The concept has not been dismissed or ‘erased’

altogether however, as in certain contexts it seems to hold its ground, particularly in what

Stewart Hall terms the ‘politics of location.’ Hall argues that theorists are unable to avoid

identity even with all of the problems they find with the concept - identity ‘operates “under

erasure” in the interval between reversal and emergence; an idea which cannot be thoughtin the old way, but without which certain key questions cannot be thought at all.’ (Hall and

Du Gay, 1996, p.16). The concept of Sami identity will be investigated in this essay and I will

demonstrate that there are (at least) two distinct but not opposed identities working parallel

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to one another for modern Sami who wish to present themselves as indigenous peoples but

who also struggle with representation which does not ‘fit’ their modern lived-reality. This

complex mix of identities is apparent in the photographic work that I shall discuss below.

There are various ways that identities are constructed and maintained. The photographic

image is important in identity construction and ever more so with the contemporary spread of

widely available digital technologies and practices of digital photo sharing. The prominence

of the photographic image in twenty-first century globalised society means that people ev-

erywhere can seemingly make a visual approximation of cultures geographically far removed

from their own. Education, the media and advertising all exploit the power of images to

convey desired messages, often presenting images in a realist manner, promoting the idea of

a ‘window’ looking into what ever is being depicted. Alan Sekula argues that “mass culture

and mass education lean heavily on photographic realism, mixing pedagogy and entertain-

ment in an avalanche of images.” (Sekula, 1987, p.187). We are trained through constant

exposure to view visual images as bearers of truth. The documentary nature of photogra-

phy invites the viewer to believe that what is seen is reality and not to recognise it as a

representation , or even a construction of reality (Sekula, 1987). This can be very powerful

when it comes to manipulating desired outcomes of an image, for example in advertising.

However, to those whom are vulnerable to misrepresentation, the ‘truthfulness’ of visual

representation becomes imperative.

Such is the case with visual representation of indigenous peoples who have tended to be

subjected to a history of misrepresentation and violent subjugation. Of course, now that

photographic technology is so widely available, people who hold positions of marginality

and whom have traditionally been depicted only by others, can make their own representa-tions of their personal realities and can make use of far-reaching distribution as social-media

technology continues to develop at great speed. However, as I shall discuss below, the po-

tential audiences of these images compared with those who see images produced by the

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non-indigenous ‘other’ remain limited. Also, media produced by indigenous people does not

necessarily make for more ‘truthful’ representation – in fact the concept of ‘truth’ seems

redundant and should be replaced by subjective individual experience. As Howard S. Becker

has argued, representation “leaves out much, in fact, most, of reality’ – representation in-

volves processes of ‘selection’, ‘translation’, ‘arrangement’, and interpretation’ and this is

no less so for indigenous media (Becker, 2007, p.126). Indigenous representations are part

of a self-fashioning exercise and often they must work within non-indigenous pre-existing

frameworks, leading to even further complication and blurring of cultural boundaries.

There is a dual parallel identity construction taking place amongst the Sami that is not

only reflected in the content of visual images but is actually formed by them. This dual

identity combines both essentialised images and images of Sami which are less focused on

capturing ‘diff erence’. On one side is an identity projected internationally through entertain-

ment photography, tourist literature and the indigenous movement in which an essentialised

link with the land is emphasised. The other is an identity more reflective of the troubles that

people have fitting into such an ideal of what it means to be Sami, through personal photog-

raphy distributed in much smaller circles. Both identities co-exist, one is useful in political

and commercial enterprises, and one is useful to the individual, for their own negotiation of

identity but both are intimately intertwined.

1.1 The Sami

Archaeology has indicated that Sami settlement patterns 2000 years ago were spread over a

much larger area than today, but over time Sami populations have withdrawn to the most

northern parts of the region (Aikio et al., 1994). Traditional economic activities were mainly

hunting and fishing but during the seventeenth century reindeer husbandry began to hold a

position of high prestige (ibid ). Reindeer are what most people associate with Sami today,

however only a minority actually rely on reindeer as a main source of income (Weaver, 2006).

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The Sami share similar cultural features across the state borders that divide them; however,

it would be false to assume cultural homogeneity as there are considerable variations in

language, livelihood, and the arts amongst many other things.

There is no formally recognised definition of the term ‘Sami’ (Henriksen, 2008), however

section 2-6 of the Sami Act 1 outlines those who are entitled to vote in Sami Parliament

elections and these criteria can be taken as defining who is identified as S ami:

“Everyone who declares that they consider themselves to be a S´ ami, and who either (i) has

S´ ami as home language, or (ii) has or has had parents, grandparents or great-grandparents

with S´ ami as home language have the right to be enrolled in the S´ ami census in the region

of residence.”

It is fundamental to note the subjectivity of self-identification in this process. Sami

identity involves self-subscription and an active desire to be recognised as such. The Sami

Parliament was established in Norway, Sweden and Finland respectively in 1987, 1992 and

1995 – its main goal being to facilitate the involvement of Sami people in policy decisions on

matters pertaining to them, however the way that the each individual state has negotiated

with the Sami Parliament has not been uniform (Errico and Hocking, 2008).

One uniting experience of many contemporary Sami is the common threat of land strug-

gles. The land which has been traditionally used by the Sami for reindeer pasture and

hunting is under continued threat of exploitation from natural resources industries and lo-

cal competition from non-Sami inhabitants. There have been numerous court cases where

ownership of land is at stake – with the Sami asserting their rights over land they have used

for generations. The Sami Council 2 formulated a statement outlining two central tenets to

their organisation:“1- We, the S´ ami, are one people and state borders shall not divide us. 2- We have our

1Act of 12 June 1987 No. 56 concerning the Sameting (the Sami Parliament) and other Sami legal mattersas subsequently amended by Act of 11 April 2003 No.22.

2Sami Political Program 1980. Second edition 1986

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own history, traditions, culture and language. From our ancestors, we have inherited the

right to land, water and livelihoods.”

However, in reality there is large internal variation between Sami groups and state borders

are divisive. Ancestral inheritance of land is fundamental to indigenous identity politics.

Rapporteur of the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations, Erica-Irene Daes states

that indigenous peoples have a ‘profound relationship’ to their traditional lands and that

‘there is a need for a diff erent conceptual framework to understand this relationship and a

need for a recognition of the cultural diff erences that exist’ 3. It is clear from the literature

published by the UN regarding indigenous peoples that an essentialised Sami identity is being

invoked in favour of Sami identity– an identity based on traditional economic and spiritual

links to the land. It is important to question simplistic notions of ‘indigenous’ identity and

to ask whether there exists a similar ‘profound’ relationship with the land between non-Sami

who live in the same conditions and do similar kinds of work. A unified, essentialised notion

of what it is to be Sami is a powerful tool in political settings but it disregards individual

experience and over-simplifies Sami identity.

3Daes 1999; para 10 – HUMAN RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES. Report of the Working Groupon Indigenous Populations on its seventeenth session(Geneva, 26-30 July 1999) Chairperson-Rapporteur:

Ms. Erica-Irene A. Daes)

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2 Sami in Images

Figure 1: David Alfaro Siqueiros - ‘Ethnography’ (Friendsofart, 2011)

I will begin this section with an image seemingly removed from Sami identity politics, how-

ever the image is a visual allegory of the kind of representational issues facing the Sami

today. The image is by Mexican social realist painter David Alfaro Siqueiros (figure 1). It is

his 1939 portrait titled ‘Ethnography’ which depicts a Mexican indigenous person with their

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face obscured by an olmec mask, about which Deborah Poole asserts: it is “a mystery hiding

rather than revealing the nature of the life of the person and culture it represents.” (Poole,

2005, p.3). Ethnographic pursuits by anthropologists and artists can be criticised on the

grounds that they construct sometimes obscuring assumptions about cultures4

. However,

it is not only representation made by outsiders which can be obscuring, images produced by

subjects themselves can prove equally restrictive. Octavio Paz argues that “we are insepa-

rable from our fictions, our features. We are condemned to invent a mask and to discover

afterward that the mask invents our true visage.” (Paz, 1990, p.216). We are in danger of

subscribing to self-made essentialised projections – ‘condemned’ to be trapped in our own

assumptions of how we must be.

Today, most Sami people have modern occupations with only 1 in 10 adults practicing

reindeer husbandry (Weaver, 2006). Tourism plays a major part in the economic life of

many Sami. The projection in tourist literature of ‘traditional’ Sami identity remains one

of the key attractions for tourists wanting to witness ‘indigenous’ modes of living. This

encompasses expectations of traditional dress, housing, craftwork, song and an essential

‘naturalness’ within the landscape. Kautokeino is a town in Northern Norway where 85%

of the population have Sami as their first language. The town is promoted through the

Norwegian tourist board as being a place where one can experience a ‘diff erent’ and ‘exotic’

culture of the Sami people. “The Sami culture is vivid and authentic even in the modern

society of today” (Visitnorway, 2011). The image accompanying this text is of a man in

traditional dress with a reindeer sleigh behind him (figure 2). The promise of a ‘vivid and

authentic’ cultural experience is what sustains much tourism in Lapland, coupled with the

appeal of nature activities. Tourism holds an ambiguous status for the Sami as on the4Ethnographic pursuits have historically come up against criticism of obscuring rather than illuminating

other cultures. Visual ethnographic representation is under even greater suspicion and today the sub-discipline of visual anthropology remains on the margins of the field. Anthropologists have been, and to acertain extent still are, suspicious of photographic images because of ‘the specter of race’ (Edwards, 2001)

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Figure 2: Sami Man as presented by Norwegian Tourist Board (Visitnorway, 2011)

one hand it off ers economic opportunities and a chance to promote indigenous culture and

potentially gain wider support for their indigenous rights issues. On the other hand, tourism

can be exploitative and insensitive – particularly when Sami involvement is limited and

control over representation is taken out of Sami hands. The primary visual statement of

Sami-ness through traditional clothing invites the gaze of the tourist and usually also of

their camera – so that even those Sami individuals who do not work in tourism but who

happen to be wearing traditional dress, become viable tourist objects. As a reaction to

this the wearing of traditional clothes is now predominantly only on special occasions or for

tourist displays (Weaver, 2006). Through the over-exposure of ‘traditional’ Sami culture for

the tourism industry, Weaver argues that Sami identity is essentialised so that modern Sami

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identities which are far removed from those commonly depicted are marginalised.

Figure 3: Sami Protest (Galdu, 2011)

In 2008 there was an organised protest against misleading cultural projections and dis-

tortions in tourist information relating to the Sami 5. Photographs from this demonstration

are currently displayed on the Sami indigenous peoples website – galdu.org. They are a

powerful set of images displaying the vigour and passion behind Sami opposition to what

they see as cultural degradation. Figure 3 depicts the marching protesters holding various

signs with slogans such as “I like real things,” and “Respect the real”. Cultural authenticity

is something which holds a deep resonance for these people in the face of tourist represen-

tations that remain outside of their control. It is notions of being a ‘real’ Sami which spur

5Representatives gathered in Roveneimi in Finnish Lapland for a week in October 2008 with the aim toaddress misrepresentations they felt were being perpetrated by the Finnish tourism industry against them.Such off ences include the sale of merchandise including clothing and craftwork bearing little resemblance toactual Sami traditional wares and the stereotypical and often false representations of Sami culture in touristliterature.

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people into wanting to promote an understanding of ‘real’ Sami culture instead of the often

streamlined version sold to tourists. The protestors in the photograph wear their traditional

costumes to add to the visual opposition to the fake clothing being sold. They also carry

the Sami flag – a visual symbol only devised in the 1980s with the formation of the Sami

Parliament. The flag symbolises the movement for Sami solidarity across nations and stands

for Sami indigenous identity. These visual demonstrations of collective Sami identity rely

heavily on essentialised ‘traditions’ and symbols of indigeneity. Here essentialism is used for

political means as a statement of cultural ‘authenticity’.

2.1 Jorma Puranen - “Imaginary Homecoming”

“Imaginary Homecomings” is a collection of photographs taken of a landscape installation

Jorma Puranen worked on which involved taking copies of old archive photographs of the

Sami and setting them into the landscape where they were originally shot. The archive

photographs were taken during prince Roland Bonaparte’s expedition to Lapland in the late

nineteenth century. At the time of making the images for “Imaginary Homecomings” (1991-

1997) Puranen had already been working in Lapland for two decades, and had become very

familiar with families there. Puranen felt compelled to make something of the images he had

come across in the museum archive in Paris and wanted to explore “temporal and spatial

distance” (Puranen and Edwards, 1999, p.11) and open up a dialogue through a metaphorical

return of the archive images to their original spatial context in the Finnmarken province of

northern Norway.

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Figure 4: Faces in Snow (Puranen and Edwards, 1999)

Puranen asserts that he gained intimate insight into Sami identity through long dis-

cussions with individuals in Sami villages and gleaned that ‘subtle visual perceptions and

inferences represent a crucial source of information in the Sami world” (ibid, p.11). He argues

that landscape where Sami identities are projected and thus it is landscape which features

most heavily in his work. However, it is Puranen’s own pre-occupation with landscape that

comes across most strong in this and later work of his. The image of Sami faces being pro-

jected on to the snow (figure 4) is highly aesthetic and a powerful symbol of S ami ancestry

and inherited land rights - it could be an icon for the Sami indigenous movement analogous

to the image of the whale as a symbol for the wildlife protection movement. This image, with

the faces of the past looking out from the prints and doubling up in their projections onto

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snow fixes the Sami in the land and binds their identity to it. The ring of faces stood upright

in the snow and the projected images on the ground can also be viewed in another way –

the upright positioning makes the images look rather like tombstones with the projected

images as graves. The images are all of long dead people whose lives in actuality we know

little about. Puranen’s assumption about the essential link between landscape and the Sami

does not leave much room for alternative Sami narratives. Preservation and resurrection

of images of long dead people do not tell the story of those people, or of their descendants

negotiating Sami identity today; the image remains a projection of Puranen’s ideas.

Elizabeth Edwards’ accompanying essay to the publication of Imaginary Homecomings

contributes a great deal to the photographs in terms of contextualising them within an

academic framework, paying particular attention to the historical and contemporary position

of archival imagery. However the reader learns little about contemporary Sami predicaments.

Of course the publication was not intended as a guide to the modern day Sami, it is more

of a poetic response to the implications and possibilities of archive photography. Yet, by

exhibiting the work internationally, Puranen’s images carry the burden of representing an

identity, or a Sami state of being, which people not familiar with Sami existence will store in

their already existing frameworks as another image of indigenousness essentially linked with

landscape and almost trapped in history.

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agrees that it is a fertile position to exploit. However, as Hal Foster argues, artists often do

not commit fully to the rigours of participant observation that would rival the standards of

anthropology, and therefore their representations can be simplistic (Foster, 1995). I would

say that Puranen’s work is not at all simplistic, it stimulates complex engagement with

issues surrounding archive photography. However, if the work is viewed as contributing

to representation of Sami identity, to both audiences abroad and to Sami themselves, it

promotes a limited view. Perhaps its practical value lies in the public demonstration of

the importance of land and history to Sami identity; Puranen’s work has been exhibited

extensively and public engagement allows for dialogue and debate on Sami issues. However,

the Sami are somewhat ‘frozen’ in the tundra in Puranen’s photographs, their ancestors

looking out from the landscape and very much part of the ‘natural’ word - even becoming

part of the trees (figure 5). The individuals depicted are un-named, ambiguous, and voiceless,

and therefore an engagement with these photographs mainly elicits reactions on the history

of the Sami as a collective people bound to nature. Perhaps its importance lies in the

‘imaginary’ repatriation to Lapland of archival imagery which Puranen facilitated. However

the ‘repatriation’ is indeed imaginary – control and appropriation of the images still remains

in the hands of Puranen – the outsider – no matter how intimate he is with Sami families.

2.2 Ola Røe – “Sami Diversities in the Turn of the Millennium”

Indigenous photography, like other visual media (as analysed by Ginsburg 1991) provides

“an outlet for the communication, defense, and strengthening of cultural, national, or

ethnic identities that preexist, and thus transcend, the media form itself, as they are simul-

taneously shaped by it” (Poole, 2005).

The Sami indigenous movement along with the indigenous tourism industry present an

essentialised image of Sami identity as being fixed within the Lapland landscape and to Sami

cultural heritage. The reality of many modern Sami is that identity is something which is

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Figure 6: Transcript with Images (Røe, 2011)

constantly negotiated and can change dependant on context. The Norwegian anthropolo-

gist and Sami activist Jorunn Eikjok co-ordinated the production of a website containing

photographs and text as a space for alternative expressions of Sami identity. The site was pro-

duced in collaboration with the University Hospital of Tromsø. It features the photographs

of Ola Røe alongside transcriptions of interviews with the Sami individuals visually repre-

sented (figure 6). What emerges is a picture of Sami identity in flux and in this instability is

a productive ambiguity whereby individuals play up or suppress their Sami-ness dependenton the situation. The photographs themselves are intimate portraits depicting family scenes

(figure 7), individuals in leisure and work activities and hardly any following the typical

‘Sami in the landscape’ stereotype. Eijok explains on the front page of the website (figure

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Figure 7: Family Scenes (Røe, 2011)

8) that the impetus for the project came from witnessing a strong feeling of marginalization

and misrepresentation on the part of Sami people. On the front page it states:

“The stereotypes contribute towards making the diversity in the S´ ami population invisible.

At worst, they lead to the propagation and continuation of negative prejudices. They also

contribute towards creating identity problems for people who fall outside of the fixed images.

This burden falls especially hard on the youth with S´ ami background, who thereby experience

di ffi culties in finding reflections of their situation and identity in the public sphere.” (Røe,

2011)

Through the photography and text on the website the individual perspective is repre-

sented and acknowledged and an alternative projection of Sami identity is allowed.

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Figure 8: Main Page (Røe, 2011)

The project was published on the internet in 1996, making innovative use of multimedia

to counteract prevalent negative and restrictive misrepresentations. However, the site does

have some drawbacks, one being that the interview text is only provided in Norwegian or

in English, and not in Sami. This seems a crucial oversight and it is perhaps because the

intended audience of the website was the younger generation of Sami who are in the most

liminal position in terms of their Sami identity and who are very likely to know either

Norwegian or English but perhaps not Sami. Alternatively, the website is intended for

Norwegian and wider international audiences to gain understanding of the Sami as people

whose everyday lives are not too dissimilar from their own. This is one way in which the

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racial prejudices mentioned on the homepage can be tackled. The information presented

in the interview transcripts is subjective and personal, much like the images themselves.

There is a recognition of individual identity over collective identity and this is one of the

main diff erences between this work and the work of Puranen. Sami identity is presented as

something which the individual has control over and can strategically manipulate. One of

the subjects is quoted as saying:

“I don’t place great emphasis on being S´ ami if I’m home in Masi, for example, because it’s

so natural. Perhaps it’s in the predominantly Norwegian environments that we sometimes

feel the urge to demonstrate our ‘Saminess’ more strongly. It can be the way in which one

argues in a discussion, for example, taking the S´ ami point of view and things like that, or

simply by the outward e ff ects in dressing yourself in a kofte or by doing other things that

show that you’re S´ ami.” (Røe, 2011)

Stewart Hall argues that identities are products of ‘the marking of diff erence and exclu-

sion’ rather than the result of a unity within a group (Hall and Du Gay, 1996, p.17). For

the Sami depicted here in Røe’s photography, Sami identity is something they recognise as a

construct and is therefore something they have control over, through both acts of suppression

and engagement. For the influential French post-colonial theorist Frantz Fanon, one of his

central arguments about racial inequality was about its visual underpinnings – that visual

technologies contribute to establishing distance (Poole, 2005). In Røe’s photography the

Sami, instead of presenting images which increase the distance between the viewer and the

subject, the Sami are shown to possess many similar characteristics to non-Sami people of

Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Clothing, food, home interiors , leisure pursuits, and

particularly representations of youth (figure 9) in Røe’s photography are eff

ectively points of recognition between Sami and non-Sami. This reduction of diff erence is not a suppression of

Sami identity rather it is a recognition of the actuality of living as a contemporary Sami and

is a representation of all of the cultural mixing and ‘hybridity’ this entails. The photographs

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such images on Sami identity can prove too much to live up to. There is an inherent

assumption encoded into these images that to be a ‘real’ Sami one is expected to match

these representations and be a ‘traditional’ person ‘of the land’. The stereotype becomes

the obscuring olmec mask as depicted in Siqueiros’ painting. This mask turns Sami identity

into a performative role, which is acted out in particular contexts.

However, this is not to say that the Sami have not benefitted from this cultural perfor-

mance and the essentialising of Sami identity. They are fully aware of their own picturesque

value. The Sami protests over misrepresentation perpetrated by the tourist industry were

more about the Sami claiming control over exactly how their culture is represented, not about

the commercialisation of these representations. Tourism continues to play an important part

in Sami economy and it is only fair that there is an element of S ami control and that they

reap some benefits from their cultural performance. Whist the stereotype ‘gives knowledge

of diff erence and simultaneously disavows or masks it.” (Bhabha, 1983, p.375), essentialisms

are also a powerful tool for uniting fragmented identities for a common purpose, in what

Spivak terms ‘strategic essentialism’ (Spivak, 1987), be it for tourism or for the struggle for

indigenous rights.

Perhaps a post-colonial pre-occupation with indigenous essentialised representation can

actually be restrictive in itself and can perpetuate the notion that dominant and marginal

cultures actually exist as binary opposites. Christopher Morton and Elizabeth Edwards

have argued, regarding approaches to the anthropological photographic archive, that view-

ing photographs in a manner which over-determines the dynamics of power relations can

“eff ectively silence precisely those voices – the indigenous, the “Other”, the disempowered

– that they intended to valorize.” (Morton and Edwards, 2009). Homi K. Bhabha arguesfor the recognition of cultural ‘ambiguity’ and ‘hybridity’ and as we move further into the

21st century, with increased global access to information, indigenous identities will undergo

considerable change along with the rest of the world. Simultaneously, an imaginary ‘au-

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thentic’ and ‘pristine’ indigenous culture will remain of high value to the tourism industry

and to a certain extent the indigenous movement, whilst becoming further removed from

indigenous people themselves. We need to create new visual frameworks, if contemporary

‘hybrid’ identities are to be acknowledged by wider public – images that do not fit within

pre-existing representational frameworks prove harder to take hold than stereotypical ones.

For the Sami, their history of cultural subjugation has of course left indelible marks

on their identity. The recognition of this has contributed to the current trend of cultural

revival with the establishing of Sami cultural institutions, research centres, and eff orts to

engage Sami youth in their Sami heritage. However, marginalization may be replicated in

the way that these eff orts are co-ordinated and in how the results are distributed (or not

distributed). With the photographic works discussed above the audiences that they reach

are totally dissimilar in terms of size, location and familiarity with the S ami. Ola Røe’s

work is only accessible through her website so prior knowledge of her work or of the project

in collaboration with the Tromsø hospital is required for access. However, Puranen’s work

has been exhibited internationally and published in the form of a glossy book. There is a

much greater potential reach of this work and subsequently the ideas expressed in it and the

imagined identity of Sami people constructed in the work reaches further. Sami resistance

to stereotypical representation has local importance and reach, but on an international scale

a stereotypical pro jection of Sami identity remains strong. The Sami indigenous movement

challenges personal Sami identity in its presentation of Sami identity as collective and rigid.

For Sami people themselves, local distribution of images which challenge stereotypes provides

an important acknowledgement that modern Sami identity is highly individualised, fluid and

adaptable in nature.

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Sami Photographic Identity

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