| Summary: | A couple of years ago, I received a Sami drinking vessel called “goksie” (in umesamiska) from my dad. The fact that it was my grandmother’s who had crafted it some time around the 70’s was news to me. The goksie has been closely investigated as a part of this thesis and a way for me to reconnect with the Sami culture. The more I learned during this investigation the more I considered to follow my grandmother’s footsteps exploring and crafting my own goksie and reclaiming knowledge through the process of making. Through this journey, questions about architecture and cultural identity evolved.Due to the degrading views of Sami culture that many generations have experienced in the history, a lot of Sami cut ties with their background. The colonization of Sápmi have contributed to the loss of Sami culture in different ways. Except from appropriating the land that the Sami used, the Swedish state split the Sami people by deciding who was the “real” and “authentic” Sami and who wasn’t. The Sami was considered racially inferior predestined only for reindeer herding. It becomes clear that the colonization affected generations like my grandmother when realizing that the consequences can be traced all the way to myself not having the knowledge to create my own goksie or the cultural heritage of speaking Sami. Being Sami today can therefore, from my perspective, relate to a feeling of loss and a fragmented identity. Except reconnecting with my own Sami heritage, the making of the goksie has become a method for collaborative work creating relationships with newly discovered relatives and people from the Sami community. Interviews with Sami and non-Sami operators working on different national levels and with different issues has also been an important method to gather information. The methodologies are based on the strategy of “digging were I stand” - a way to learn more about my own history and through that knowledge reveal stories and voices of others, adapt to the needs and aspiration of the community, break free from ...
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