Sámi people belong in Umeå: A qualitative research of institutions ontological security provision for the Sámi community in Umeå

• Main Author: Barkström, Alicia
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: English
• Published: Lunds universitet/Graduate School 2022
• Subjects: Ontological security; Sámi; Identity; Belonging; Decolonial theory; Law and Political Science
• Online Access: http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9098695

For many years, indigeneity has been conceptualized as rural, making Indigenous communities and people in cities invisible globally. For the Sámi people, Europe’s only indigenous people, security is mainly understood as physical-centering extraction and environmental degradation. Focusing on the urban Sámi community in Umeå in Sweden, cultural and political belonging in the city arises as vital in everyday life. Based on previous research, the roles of institutions in creating a sense of belonging are the focus of this research. The experience and construction of belonging is conceptualized through a decolonial reading of ontological security theory. Experiences and perspectives of the Sámi community in Umeå was gathered during an ethnographic fieldwork complemented by individual interviews and articles from local and national newspapers. The material was coded deductively and inductively using thematic analysis. Såkhie Sámi Association, Umeå municipality, and the Swedish state were the primary ontological security providers. The role of the facilitator of ontological security is proposed to better understand relations in the networks of institutions that provide ontological security. Western-based universalist assumptions are critiqued as incompatible with the Sámi worldview. While institutions provide resources and spaces for the individuals’ ontological security construction, the long-term solution for the Sámi people is the end of the main cause of ontological insecurity - colonialization.