European Indigenous Internet Representation: Potentials and Perils

• Main Author: For Sámi
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: BACKGROUND; Norway; Sámi
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.556.356; http://sections.ecrea.eu/CD/docs/taylor.pdf

The focus of this study specifically concerns the potentials for cultural and political empowerment of European (and other) indigenous peoples through their representations on the internet, weighed against the perils of such representation. Focusing on the Sámi of Finland, Sweden and Norway, the only peoples within the European Union to be officially recognised as indigenous by the EU, the paper considers answers to the following: Does the internet provide new and/or increased threats to the well-being and very existence of Sámi culture, as an electronic extension of colonialism and genocide? Or can it also provide some means to subvert the seemingly unstoppable historical, cultural and political processes that have so long endangered indigenous people globally? And what exactly is the state of Nordic indigenous cyberactivism? 2