Umeå University's logo

I Sigbjørn Skådens roman Fugl – den i en mening första science fiction-romanen av en samisk författare – har en grupp människor koloniserat en annan planet, som Elon Musk idag drömmer om att befolka Mars. Men språnget ut i det okända leder varken till spänning eller romantik och ger heller ingen lösning på de utmaningar som finns för en växande befolkning på en hotad planet med begränsade resurser.

The essay explores indigenous ecopoetics with a focus on challenges of dualism between reason and nature connected with the “standpoint of mastery”. This involves the activation of traditional spirituality related to a view on reality which implies that there are no sharp borders between various life forms and that everything is alive and interconnected. Nils-Aslak Valkeapää (1943-2001), the most prominent among modern Sámi authors, was awarded the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 1991. In his poetry Valkeapää consciously uses elements from ancient Sámi culture. The poetry books, first published in North Sami, The Sun, My Father, and The Earth My Mother are both permeated with a traditional indigenous view on cosmos as a pluriverse with sentient beings. In the books, Valkeapää contrasts a traditional holistic Sámi and a modern Western worldview. The latter is depicted as connected with colonization, exploitation of natural resources, invasive technologies, and extinction of life forms. Valkeapää‘s ecopoetic approach is reflected in poetry from different parts of Sápmi, the traditional Sámi homeland. The lyrical I of Norwegian Sámi Inga Ravna Eira’s Ii dát leat dat eana (“This is not that earth”) is a goddess who has returned to earth to questions humans about deterioration of the environment and climate change. In Swedish Sámi Linnea Axelsson’s Aednan references are made to the damming of rivers as well as climate change. Both were first published in 2018. Today, intersections between ecopoetics, decolonization, and activism are found in diverse genres on the Sámi cultural scene, and poetry renewing the ancient oral genres of yoik and story-telling remains a central genre.