Sámi Research in Transition

For several decades now, there have been calls to decolonize research on the Indigenous Sámi people, and to make it accountable to the Sámi society. While this has contributed to the rise of a vibrant Sámi research community in the Nordic countries, less attention has been paid to what extent, and how the "Sámi turn" in research has been implemented in practice. Written by prominent Nordic and Sámi scholars anchored in the Sámi research communities in Finland, Norway and Sweden, this volume explores not only the meanings and implications of this turn across disciplines, but also some of the challenges that efforts to create space for Sámi voices, knowledges and perspectives still meet today. The book provides a timely, interdisciplinary engagement with the central themes that have framed the development of Sámi research, and a critical appraisal of the impact that efforts to decolonize research in the Sámi context have had upon Nordic societies and state policies so far. Sámi Research in Transition is valuable for scholars and students interested in Sámi history and society, Arctic and Circumpolar Indigenous studies and critical studies on the relationship between knowledge and social change.

Laura Junka-Aikio is a Finnish scholar who currently works as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellow and as project leader for the Norwegian Research Council funded research project New Sámi Renaissance: Nordic Colonialism, Social Change and Indigenous Cultural Policy at the Arctic University Museum of Norway, UiT – The Arctic University of Norway. Her research is currently concerned with the relationships between politics of knowledge, identity, contemporary colonialism and social change.Jukka Nyyssönen Dr.art., project leader of Societal Dimensions of Sámi Research, worked during most of the project at UiT – The Arctic University of Norway in The Arctic University Museum of Norway. He currently works as a senior researcher in the High North department of the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU). Nyyssönen has published widely on Sami history, e.g. in the fields of environmental history, educational history and history of science. Veli-Pekka Lehtola is is a (North) Sámi from the Aanaar or Inari in Northern Finland and a professor of Sámi culture in the Giellagas Institute for Sámi Studies at the University of Oulu, Finland. Lehtola specializes in the history of the Sámi and Lapland, in Sámi representations as well as in modern Sámi art.