Decolonising the Eye: Visual Sovereignty in Sámi Film and Storytelling
The Sámi indigenous people, who hail from the northernmost territories of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula of Russia, have in recent years undergone a burgeoning of productivity in their visual media and cinema industries. This proliferation of creative material has been accompanied b...
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ftunidurhamethes:oai:etheses.dur.ac.uk:14567 2023-05-15T17:05:04+02:00 Decolonising the Eye: Visual Sovereignty in Sámi Film and Storytelling LEE, KELSEY,ERIN 2022 application/pdf http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/14567/ http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/14567/2/Lee000615909.pdf unknown oai:etheses.dur.ac.uk:14567 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/14567/2/Lee000615909.pdf LEE, KELSEY,ERIN (2022) Decolonising the Eye: Visual Sovereignty in Sámi Film and Storytelling. Doctoral thesis, Durham University. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/14567/ Thesis NonPeerReviewed 2022 ftunidurhamethes 2022-09-23T14:17:20Z The Sámi indigenous people, who hail from the northernmost territories of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula of Russia, have in recent years undergone a burgeoning of productivity in their visual media and cinema industries. This proliferation of creative material has been accompanied by a significant amount of international attention, collaboration, acclaim, and honours at both mainstream and indigenous film festivals, from Sundance in Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.A. to the imagiNATIVE Media Arts Festival in Toronto, Canada. However, this primacy of Sámi narrative agency, as well as input and ownership over their portrayals in broader global media, is relatively new and has emerged only within the last few decades. Indeed, prior to the 1960s and 70s, roughly, depictions of indigenous peoples, their lives, and traditions were largely dominated by outsiders. As a consequence, the Sámi and other global indigenous groups have been forced to grapple with the widespread misapprehensions of majority cultures as well as stereotypical, simplistic, and reductive depictions of their lives, epistemologies, and identities in both ethnographic media and other forms of global cinema. In this thesis, I will emphasise that the stereotypes that populate Nordic mainstream media, which often depict Sámi characters as victims, alcoholics, slum-dwellers, mystics, or as little more than combatants in territorial disputes, have emerged in part from narratives that have stemmed from the domestic colonial legacies of the nations they inhabit. Specifically, I will argue that Norwegianisation, a colonial paradigm that defined Norwegian politics from roughly 1850 to 1980 and aimed to acculturate and “civilise” the Sámi people for the benefit of the newly sovereign nation, still leaves a narrative trace that paints a reductive picture of the Sámi minority, and that this influence continues to impact the Sámi presence – or lack thereof – in Nordic media. Conversely, and perhaps more importantly, I will also explore how Sámi cinema ... Thesis kola peninsula Sámi Durham University: Durham e-Theses Canada Kola Peninsula Norway |
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The Sámi indigenous people, who hail from the northernmost territories of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula of Russia, have in recent years undergone a burgeoning of productivity in their visual media and cinema industries. This proliferation of creative material has been accompanied by a significant amount of international attention, collaboration, acclaim, and honours at both mainstream and indigenous film festivals, from Sundance in Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.A. to the imagiNATIVE Media Arts Festival in Toronto, Canada. However, this primacy of Sámi narrative agency, as well as input and ownership over their portrayals in broader global media, is relatively new and has emerged only within the last few decades. Indeed, prior to the 1960s and 70s, roughly, depictions of indigenous peoples, their lives, and traditions were largely dominated by outsiders. As a consequence, the Sámi and other global indigenous groups have been forced to grapple with the widespread misapprehensions of majority cultures as well as stereotypical, simplistic, and reductive depictions of their lives, epistemologies, and identities in both ethnographic media and other forms of global cinema. In this thesis, I will emphasise that the stereotypes that populate Nordic mainstream media, which often depict Sámi characters as victims, alcoholics, slum-dwellers, mystics, or as little more than combatants in territorial disputes, have emerged in part from narratives that have stemmed from the domestic colonial legacies of the nations they inhabit. Specifically, I will argue that Norwegianisation, a colonial paradigm that defined Norwegian politics from roughly 1850 to 1980 and aimed to acculturate and “civilise” the Sámi people for the benefit of the newly sovereign nation, still leaves a narrative trace that paints a reductive picture of the Sámi minority, and that this influence continues to impact the Sámi presence – or lack thereof – in Nordic media. Conversely, and perhaps more importantly, I will also explore how Sámi cinema ... |
format |
Thesis |
author |
LEE, KELSEY,ERIN |
spellingShingle |
LEE, KELSEY,ERIN Decolonising the Eye: Visual Sovereignty in Sámi Film and Storytelling |
author_facet |
LEE, KELSEY,ERIN |
author_sort |
LEE, KELSEY,ERIN |
title |
Decolonising the Eye: Visual Sovereignty in Sámi Film and Storytelling |
title_short |
Decolonising the Eye: Visual Sovereignty in Sámi Film and Storytelling |
title_full |
Decolonising the Eye: Visual Sovereignty in Sámi Film and Storytelling |
title_fullStr |
Decolonising the Eye: Visual Sovereignty in Sámi Film and Storytelling |
title_full_unstemmed |
Decolonising the Eye: Visual Sovereignty in Sámi Film and Storytelling |
title_sort |
decolonising the eye: visual sovereignty in sámi film and storytelling |
publishDate |
2022 |
url |
http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/14567/ http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/14567/2/Lee000615909.pdf |
geographic |
Canada Kola Peninsula Norway |
geographic_facet |
Canada Kola Peninsula Norway |
genre |
kola peninsula Sámi |
genre_facet |
kola peninsula Sámi |
op_relation |
oai:etheses.dur.ac.uk:14567 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/14567/2/Lee000615909.pdf LEE, KELSEY,ERIN (2022) Decolonising the Eye: Visual Sovereignty in Sámi Film and Storytelling. Doctoral thesis, Durham University. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/14567/ |
_version_ |
1766059440733159424 |