The Right To Be Cold
Voices

Anne Olli is a biology teacher in Sápmi. Against all odds, she is trying to keep the indigenous language North Sámi alive. In a personal insight, she explains why.

Our planetary ecology and climate are being wrecked. It is the result of the global misuse of resources over centuries. Tero Mustonen from the organisation Snowchange explains rewilding through the help of Indigenous techniques. 

The lakes freeze over later, less fish is caught and ice roads melt:  In Yakutia, climate change has long stopped being a theoretical concept. Our author Vyacheslav Shadrin on the dwindling relationship between humans and nature.

When speaking to Sámi people it seems that for many Sámi, a good life is linked to the well-being of the environment. This text focuses on the Indigenous spirituality of the Sámi and its perspectives on the environment, death and climate change.

A wave of Inuit political activism in recent years has begun producing serious structural change in Canada’s political landscape, and the scientific landscape may be next.

Not to harvest more than what is needed – that is the basic understanding of the Sámi. How does this fit together with a capitalist society in which nature is increasingly being exploited? Susanne Hætta writes about the threat posed to the Indigenous people by human-made climate change.

Promoting and protecting the art and culture of the Inuit of Nunavik is the mission of the Avataq Cultural Institute in Montreal. In this interview, artists Olivia Lya Thomassie and Nicolas Pirti-Duplessis, who both work at the institute, talk about their life between two cultures.

Investors and trade agreements play a significant role in dictating what people  produce, cultivate, extract, manufacture and, on the other hand, what is protected. Where such substantial decisions are made, Indigenous socio-philosophies, ecological knowledge and values need to be included to a much greater extent.

The year 2020 brought one disaster after another. Optimism was rare. Nevertheless, the cohesion and willingness to act, especially among young people, give our author Aka Niviâna a positive attitude. An essay about the challenges we are facing and the absolute will to tackle them. 

The worst forest fires Yakutia has seen in a long time plunged the region into embers and smoke for months. Tatiana Philippova's poem portrays the situation, full of fear and tension. 
 

What is culture and how is its resurgence linked to art and digitisation? Svetlana Romanova writes about the critical importance of cultural participation of Arctic residents on the public agenda and the role of Indigenous visual sovereignty in the sustainability of Indigenous identities.
 

What is it like to grow up next to and live your life in harmony with the river? And how is it changing today? Artist and writer, Tanja Koistinen, has been watching the river in various locations during the summer and wrote a letter.
 

When thinking about Indigenous traditions, Rap usually is not the first thing that comes to mind. For musician Áilu Valle, it’s the perfect way to express the struggles of the Sámi and their relationship to nature. 

In this poem by the Sami poet Inger-Mari Aikio, someone talks – in the “darkest of the dark” – to the polar night, in which lives go out like candles. The polar night in which eyes can embrace, the polar night which doesn’t let go until the sun displaces its darkness.

Sámi architect and artist Joar Nango finds political terms such as ‘decolonisation’ and ‘indigenous communities’ problematic.  In an interview with artist and author Susanne Hætta, he explains why he prefers to define his identity differently.

Poet Timimie Märak is Sámi and a gender queer lesbian. In their poem, Timimie processes the different facets of their identity.

People’s connection to nature and the climate crisis are themes in Elle Sofe Sara’s performance at the Arctic Arts Festival. In the video interview, the Sámi director and choreographer talks about how her Indigenous heritage and identity is reflected in her artistic work. 

As an artist, Marije Jenssen feels deeply influence by her Sámi-heritage. In this contribution, she shows her pieces and explains, how her enthusiasm for Arctic landscapes brought her into the arts.
 

We already have a climate crisis, “we cannot also risk a nature crisis,” Aili Keskitalo, president of the Sámi Parliament in Norway says. For years now, she has been fighting the Norwegian government’s plans to increase the number of wind energy farms. She talks about why in an interview.

The melting of sea ice opens unprecedented opportunities for Russian business projects in the Arctic. Author Rodion Vasilievich Sulyandziga has his doubts if they heed the rights of the North’s Indigenous peoples.

The global pandemic forces everyone to lockdown. But so-called progress does not stop. These diary entries by Pirita Näkkäläjärvi deal with innovative ways in which the Sámi are making themselves heard. 

It is safe to say that land conflicts are nothing new to Indigenous Peoples – indeed, land conflicts may be the one thing that they all have in common. But in the age of the climate crisis, a new type of land conflict has arisen to threaten their livelihoods, cultures and survival.

For the Sámi and their reindeer husbandry, wind power is neither green nor progress. It is just another industry that is gradually fragmenting the Sami cultural landscape, writes Eva Maria Fjellheim, PhD candidate at the Center for Sami Studies at UiT's, in this article.