| Summary: | In 2010, five people made an unusual find: an old gievrie, a South Sami drum. They found it in the landscape near the village of Røyrvik, in the Norwegian part of Saepmie, close to the national border with Sweden. According to Norwegian law, such a find should be reported, and the item handed over to the authorities. But the group left it where it was found. A process then started that led to a three-way agreement between the authorities of Norway, the Sami parliament, and the local Sami association, before the gievrie was handed over to a museum, the Vitenskabsmuseet, in Trondheim. It is still kept there today, in a storeroom, more than eleven years after the discovery. In this dissertation I use Indigenous Research Methodology, an approach that I find corresponds to the methods developed in local Sami centers during recent decades. It is a method where the local Sami people are involved in all parts of the research process from initiation to completion, and where the final outcome must also benefit them. Discussions with Sami people in the area and stories told by them reveal that the landscape lives and that the drum, the rock it was found in, and the ancestors connected to them have their own agency – a relational worlsview – meaning that as much as possible about their will must be investigated before any decision can be taken about whether the drum should be moved from its place of discovery. Because of a history of oppression, marginalization, and mistrust, and due to differences in culture, the Sami are hesitant to discuss these matters in public. But, silence is also significant for other reasons, apart from being situated in a subordinated position in relations of power. Not having a language for the issues in concern, not having any answers, culturally significant non-verbal communication instead of spoken language, a will to exclude unwanted participants: these are also reasons and methods. Western education is based on text while Sami training to a great extent is non-spoken and transmitted the same ...
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