New article: “No Past, No Name, No Place? Urban Sámi Invisibility and Visibility in the Past and Present”

mikbn on 21. January 2022

In Aboriginal policy studies Vol. 9, no. 2, 2021, Mikkel Berg-Nordlie “explores the broad erasure of Sámi from urban landscapes, focusing in particular on their urban invisibility with respect to Sámi place names and the absence of “places of remembrance” for Sámi history.” (Chris Andersen, editor).

The article is available for free here: https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/aps/index.php/aps/article/view/29395/21417

Conference: “An urban future for Sápmi?”

mikbn on 10. January 2017

A conference on Sámi urbanization and Sámi urbanity will take place in Trondheim during the fall of 2017. The conference will be held in Sverresborg Trøndelag Folk Museum, lasting two days, October 19.-20, 2017

“An urban future for Sápmi” aims to gather researchers on Sámi urbanization and urbanity from different institutions and states. Researchers on indigenous urbanization in other countries will also be present as specially invited guests.

The main part of the conference will be open to the public and there will be no participation fee.

UPDATE: A preliminary program  is now available here.

“An urban future for Sápmi” is  part of Tråante2017, the centenniary celebration of the first border-transcending Sámi political meeting. It is organized by the NIBR Institute of the Oslo and Akershus Unviersity College and  Sverresborg Folk Museum, in cooperation with the Institute for Social Research. The conference is also part of the NUORGÁV project, and financed by the Norwegian Research Council‘s Programme for Sámi Research.

 

Research workshop in Lapland

mikbn on 6. September 2016

On September 1-2. 2016, Nuorgáv’s final research workshop was held in Rovaniemi (Lapland Province, Finland).

Special subjects for discussion was the planned book An urban future for Sápmi, and the project’s closing conference which is to be held in Trondheim during the fall of 2017 and be open for the public.

The Arktikum Centre at Rovaniemi's University of Lapland served as the venue for NUORGÁV's Fall 2017 workshop. Image: Wikimedia Commons, by Francisco M. Marzoa Alonso

The Arktikum Centre at Rovaniemi’s University of Lapland served as the venue for NUORGÁV’s Fall 2017 workshop. Image: Wikimedia Commons, by Francisco M. Marzoa Alonso

News about the book, the conference, and the seven academic articles to be published as part of the project, will be posted on this website.

The workshop in the city known as Roavvenjárga in North Sámi was also attended by members of the Nuorgáv reference group of Sámi and municipal representatives, as was the previous workshop in Tromsø.

The 2016 workshop was hosted and organized by the University of Lapland. Previous research workshops have been held in Oslo (Sámi: Oslove) and Tromsø (Romsa) in Norway, at the NIBR institute and the youth culture house TVIBIT, respectively.

 

Team members

mikbn on 25. February 2016

The project is a cooperation between NIBR (Oslo, Norway), Nord University (Bodø, Norway) and the Arctic Centre (Rovaniemi, Finland). The following researchers constitute the project team.

NIBR Urban and Regional Research Institute, Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences

Mikkel Berg-Nordlie.  Key subjects: Urban indigenous governance, urban indigenous spaces, youth organizing, education and kindergardens.  Case areas: Oslo, Trondheim, Alta (Norway). Project leader, 2017-2022.

Jørn Holm-Hansen. Project leader, 2015-2017.

Nord University

Astri Dankertsen. Key subjects: Urban indigenous identity, youth organizing.  Case areas: Bodø, Tromsø (Norway).

Arctic Centre, University of Lapland

Tanja Joona. Key subjects: Youth organizing, youth interest representation.  Case areas: Helsinki, Oulu, Rovaniemi (Finland).

Researchers with other institutional attachments

Anna Andersen (Centre for Sámi Studies, UiT – Arctic University of Norway). Key subjects: Education and kindergardens.  Case areas: Murmansk province (Russia).

Chris Andersen (University of Alberta). Key subjects: Global comparison. Indigenous urbanization.

Marte Winsvold (Institute for Social Research). Key subjects: Youth organizing.  Case areas: Oslo (Norway). Project leader, 2015.

Christina Åhrén (private researcher). Key subjects: Youth organizing.  Case areas: Umeå, Stockholm (Sweden).

Indigenous in the City

mikbn on 11. February 2016

Indigenous peoples worldwide are becoming increasingly urbanized, particularly the young indigenous population. Cultures and identities that were once pushed to the rural peripheries, now have to survive and grow in an urban context. The NUORGÁV project (2015 – 2022) investigates urban indigenous politics, with a special eye to how young indigenous people organize and attempt to influence the provision of services to the urban indigenous populations.

NUORGÁV is an international research project that gathers and compares data from four countries: Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. The project is focused on the situation of the border-transcending Sámi nation.

The project is a cooperation between the institute NIBR under the Oslo and Akershus University College , the Nord University, and the Arctic Centre under the University of Lapland. It is financed by the Norwegian Research Council’s Programme for Sámi Studies.

The project ended in 2022, with the publication of the book “An urban future for Sápmi?” (Berghahn, 2022). Read more about the book and the articles produced by the project under “products” at this website.