Creative visions of Arctic geography from Indigenous perspectives

Grounded in the spatiality of Indigenous existence, Circumpolar Connections: Creative Indigenous Geographies of the Arctic is an innovatively foundational book about experiences and conceptions of geography in the circumpolar world. The book centers Arctic writers and artists as creators of space and disseminators of geographical knowledge emerging from Indigenous epistemologies. It collects newly commissioned poems, short stories, and essays that are accompanied by responses in the form of visual art--including paintings, photographs, and mixed media artworks--as well as brief academic reflections. Containing multiple languages--from English and Russian to North Sámi, Kalaallisut, and Sakha--as well as translations, the book is grounded in dialogues and conversations between creative practitioners from across the circumpolar North. Among others, they include Alutiiq, Eyak, Gwich'in, Innu, Inupiaq, Inuvialuk, Lingit, and Yup'ik writers and visual artists, alongside Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars. Extending geo- beyond earth and -graphy beyond writing, the creative geographies of Circumpolar Connections powerfully expand the Arctic into manifold spaces imagined by a multiplicity of Indigenous stories and aesthetic forms. In doing so, they offer circumpolar conversations that speak to Arctic communities while reaching out to global audiences.

[Sample Text]

English language assimilation as a bite of sashimi

it is like I am eating my own tongue
cut precisely, a flesh triangle
cool red bloodless
and placed in my mouth
I cannot speak
it tastes like my own tongue
salt and flesh
I am eating my own tongue
the weight of it

Based on a large pool of oral material as well as multiple Sámi museum collections, this book examines the connection between Sámi identities, duodji, sovereignty and Sámi heritage objects in museums.

Traditionally, duodji has been defined as Sámi craft, but in her work Finbog demonstrates how this definition is the result of a historical devaluation caused by multiple colonial strategies. She goes on to redefine the practice of duodji as an important Sámi epistemology of aesthetics and muitalusat [stories] centered within a system of relations that are expressed as bonds of kinship.

Drawing on the concepts, paradigms and analytical tools created from this system of knowledge, Finbog engages with multiple processes and expressions of Sámi Indigenous identity and sovereignty within the context of museums and cultural heritage institutions. Using the practices, materials, and relations of Sámi duodji as a lens, she thus provides new insights into the role of Sámi museums as Indigenous institutions, and furthermore how such institutions have come to provide an important component of Sámi epistemologies.

By way of multiple conversations as well as museum visits with duojárat, or practitioners of duodji, Finbog also investigates the relation between museums, duodji, and Sámi source communities, showing how the formation of these relations have a massive impact on both Sámi identities and perceptions of sovereignty. As such, the book provides a far more complex picture and understanding of museum collections, Sámi museums as cultural heritage institutions, and the multiple and diverse processes that are initiated in the negotiation of Sámi identities and expressions of sovereignty, than has been historically assumed.

Based on a large pool of oral material as well as multiple Sámi museum collections, this book examines the connection between Sámi identities, duodji, sovereignty and Sámi heritage objects in museums.

Traditionally, duodji has been defined as Sámi craft, but in her work Finbog demonstrates how this definition is the result of a historical devaluation caused by multiple colonial strategies. She goes on to redefine the practice of duodji as an important Sámi epistemology of aesthetics and muitalusat [stories] centered within a system of relations that are expressed as bonds of kinship.

Drawing on the concepts, paradigms and analytical tools created from this system of knowledge, Finbog engages with multiple processes and expressions of Sámi Indigenous identity and sovereignty within the context of museums and cultural heritage institutions. Using the practices, materials, and relations of Sámi duodji as a lens, she thus provides new insights into the role of Sámi museums as Indigenous institutions, and furthermore how such institutions have come to provide an important component of Sámi epistemologies.

By way of multiple conversations as well as museum visits with duojárat, or practitioners of duodji, Finbog also investigates the relation between museums, duodji, and Sámi source communities, showing how the formation of these relations have a massive impact on both Sámi identities and perceptions of sovereignty. As such, the book provides a far more complex picture and understanding of museum collections, Sámi museums as cultural heritage institutions, and the multiple and diverse processes that are initiated in the negotiation of Sámi identities and expressions of sovereignty, than has been historically assumed.