Sámi Mobilities in Colonial Spaces and the Right to Make a Home

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores Sámi mobilities and immobilities within colonial power dynamics. Discussing voluntary and involuntary Sámi mobilities across borders, it also touches on Sámi early modern material objects in motion, as well as the collecting and exchange of Sámi ancestral remains. Recent homecomings of Sámi material culture and ancestral remains – as part of cultural revitalisation, repatriation and decolonisation processes – illustrate the development of new mobilities and power dynamics. Challenging colonial notions of Sámi people as being bound to the perceived traditional Sámi domains, as well as the nationalist cartographies projected in much of earlier research, this article aims to stimulate a rethinking of Sámi mobility and agency, and the right to make a home. Acknowledging and examining the mobility and the homemaking of Sámi individuals and groups contributes to a deeper understanding of the complexities and transformations of Nordic colonialism, and ideas of borders, identities and belonging.