The Difficult Sami Heritage; : a study of museum practices

• Main Author: Thorell, Kristina
• Format: Bachelor Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Uppsala universitet, Teologiska institutionen 2019
• Subjects: difficult heritage; Sami heritage; colonization; religious history; Humanities and the Arts; Humaniora och konst; Northern Sweden; sami; Sapmi
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-385160

This study focuses on the difficult Sami heritage which is exhibited within local history museums in northern Sweden. The study incorporates theories from cultural science and sociology but it is written within religious history as a philological and text-oriented discipline where discourses and social constructions of the Sami heritage and worldviews are in focus. The overall aim of this study is to increase the understanding of the difficult Sami heritage. This means that the analysis focuses on perspectives and discourses within local museums and Sami organisations. The first research question revolves around the significances and meanings of the difficult Sami heritage: What phenomena (artefacts) and dimensions (immaterial culture) of the difficult past in Sapmi are highlighted? The second research question revolves around the power to represent the Sami heritage: How is the difficult Sami heritage represented? The third research question revolves around perspectives within museum practices: What approaches are the museum practice based upon? This study focuses on four museums in northern Sweden; Ajtte museum, Samgården, Norrbottens museums and Hägnan museum. They are all local history museums which exhibit the past within a specific region from a rather broad or holistic historical perspective. The student visited each museum and observed the exhibitions then. She read texts, analysed artefacts and watched movies. Facts and interpretations were documented with a pen and the most important phenomena authenticated with a camera. The difficult phenomena and dimensions within the museums were structured in three groups: living conditions, dark artefacts and colonization. The group living condition refers to poor people, risks, cold climate, hard work, illnesses and social classes. Dark artefacts refer to very old graves and drums which have been lost to the external society. Colonization refers to representations of Sápmi, uses of lands and resources, wounds, lack of local participation within decision-making ...