Repatriation

Amongst the world's indigenous peoples, repatriation is strongly visible nowadays. The Sámi have also started discussing the administration and repatriation of their own culture and cultural heritage. Repatriation can refer to both changing the physical location of an object and to exchanging information. Symbolically, repatriation is extremely important to the cultural identity of indigenous peoples.  The problems with the Sámi cultural heritage are nearly the same in Finland, Sweden and Norway, even though its administration has been arranged in these countries in different ways. In Denmark, repatriation has been commenced by turning over the administration rights of collections and artefacts to Greenland. With this project, one goal is to have the administration of the Sámi cultural heritage discussed. The Sámi should be guaranteed better opportunities to administer their own cultural heritage and environment, which will, in turn, allow them to influence the portrayal of their own past.

The project was launched in April 2006 and will end on November 31st, 2007. The project leader started work at the Sámi Museum Siida in Inari in June. Team members are located in Finland, Sweden and Norway. Preparations for inventory have been started by creating a survey form about their collections for museums and other entities that have Sámi artefacts, objects and collections. This survey will be carried out in Finland and Norway; a similar survey was done by the Ájtte Museum in Sweden in 2005. The places where the collections will be inventoried will be decided on the basis of the answers received. The practical inventory work will start in November, when the team members have started entering records into the databases at the museums. The goal is to save and check the data for each artefact and object and to photograph all of the Sámi artefacts located in the Nordic Countries. Due to the limitations imposed by the project's schedule, inventories will be focussed more on those museums that have their data still on cards. For museums that have already archived and photographed their artefacts and collections according to modern practices, we will try to negotiate with them on the allowing their collections to be imported into the new database.

As the project winds up in autumn 2007, an international seminar on the repatriation ideology will take place at the Sámi Museum Siida and when the database is being published, a book on the project will be published. When the project is over, we will be trying to launch another project to map out the Sámi cultural heritage. A pan-Nordic project, funded in part by the EU, that focusses on collecting material related to the Sámi yoiking tradition is currently underway.