Trust in Difficult Times

The sensation of trust is closely aligned with feeling safe, and yet, from a historical perspective, there has been little cause for Indigenous peoples to feel safe. The violence inflicted on Sámi communities and bodies in the continued process of colonisation; the silencing of their thoughts and their voices; as well as the marginalisation of everything they are, make it almost impossible for them to look outside of themselves to feel either safe or trusting. How then are they supposed to find it in themselves to show trust in the very institutions and structures that have failed to offer safe spaces where Sámi diversity is viewed as beneficial and empowering, rather than as a deficit otherness to be combatted and subdued? 

Challenging the seemingly impossible, four Sámi artists, thinkers, guardians, and practitioners come together in a discursive exploration of trust. Together they walk the paths of imagination to see how trust may be conceived of in an Indigenous and Sámi context, and furthermore what implications said imagination may have on the ongoing and necessary relations with non-Indigenous structures and institutions. 

The conversation is commissioned by the Goethe-Institut (the institutes in Norway, Sweden, and Finland) and was facilitated by Sámi scholar and curator Dr Liisa-Rávná Finbog from the Norwegian side of the border. She was joined by Niillas Beaska and Ida Benonisen from Norwegian Sápmi and Emmi Nuorgan from Finland. Also participating in the discussion was Sámi word-warrior Timimie Märak from the Swedish side of the border.