Dr. Silje Solheim Karlsen’s message traveled a great distance to connect with the College of Menominee Nation.
A professor of Nordic literature at the Arctic University of Norway, as well as an adjunct professor at the Sámi University of Applied Sciences, Karlsen is “particularly interested in decolonizing teaching practices and pedagogy related to teaching.” Last month, she presented a public lecture on recent Sámi publications.
The Sámi are the traditionally Sámi-speaking Indigenous people inhabiting the region of Sápmi, which encompasses large northern parts of contemporary Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula in Russia. CMN’s Sustainable Development Institute has a history of collaborating with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of German, Nordic and Slavic Studies to connect with Sámi scholars. Karlsen’s lecture is the latest offering in their ongoing partnership grounded in cultural exchange.
Discussing how themes of Indigenous identity appear across genres, Karlsen placed the 2024 novel “Sameproblemet” by Kathrine Nedrejord in conversation with the 2023 poetry collection “Balvvat bullet” by Synnøve Persen.
The common theme of the two works is their subject matters’ journey from embodying a colonized mindset of shame over one’s ancestor’s cultural ways to seeking what was lost to reclaim one’s sense of self.
Nedrejord’s fictional protagonist Marie laments to a mirror, “I’ve lost hold of who I was … you lack a soul, I think, almost aloud to my reflection. You are a nobody … what I write is meaningless.”
Marie admits to having a feeling of voicelessness caused by not knowing her Sámi language. She says, “I lack the words to write what I want to write. They do not exist in Norwegian, not in French.”
Marie contrasts her own deficiencies with that of her parentage. “My mother is traditional Sámi literature: the oral. She writes with her voice, colors her stories, never in muted tones, but in bright red, bright blue, neon pink or deep black.”
Other languages can express how it feels to lose connection to one’s Sámi culture, but only the Sámi language can capture what it means to live within it.
Karlsen then highlighted how one of Persen’s poem shows how childhood aggressions against Sámi people lead to their lifelong shame.
Persen writes, “mother had sewn new striped gávttiid for the girls when they went away for school/but they were teased and bullied so harshly that none of them wore a gákit [traditional clothing] again/it forever affected Ailá’s self-esteem when the schoolmaster with a pointer struck the seven-year-old on the head and shouted/you will be nothing you are far too stupid/the words followed her through life until that Sunday morning she drew her last breath.”
Yet, Karlsen’s explication did not end with the writers’ silent indignity about their inherited lifeways but rather a bold exclamation of the cultural genocide inflicted upon Sámi people.
Nedrejord writes, “We did not want to lose our culture, or language, we did not ask the Norwegian state to ban Sámi first names, Sámi naming traditions, Sámi belief, Sámi language in schools … We asked for two things: We want to exist and we want to be Sámi. That was one thing too many.”
Karlsen quoted Persen next, stating hopefully that we “wanted you to come back to joik comfort to complete the bonds to the ancestors.”
Karlsen concluded her presentation noting that despite these recent published works capturing progress over time, “For both, the stories are not finished yet.”
After Karlsen concluded, SDI Sustainability Coordinator Rebecca Edler said, “There are so many parallels to Native Americans. We are not alone. Indigenous people throughout the world have gone through these atrocities. Hearing these stories can help us grow and heal.”
Later, Edler explained the reason for Karlsen’s lecture.
She said, “We live in a multicultural world, and the more that we learn about other cultures, the more well-versed we are to understand those in our community and around the world. Meeting other Indigenous people and learning their stories can bring awareness to all who attend the presentation.”
Edler added, “For me, the success of this presentation is that attendees would walk away with new knowledge that can be applied both in and out of the classroom.”
In effect, the message of Indigenous healing and cultural reclamation has a great distance left to travel.
Still, Karlsen’s lecture at CMN helped span the distance between growth and healing.
Ryan Winn, Ph.D., teaches communications, English, history and theater at the College of Menominee Nation. Visit www.menominee.edu for more information about the school.