The governance of urban indigenous spaces: Norwegian Sámi examples

ABSTRACT

How do different ways of governing urban indigenous social spaces facilitate or frustrate local indigenous self-government? A major challenge in Norway is the absence of actors that represent the entire local indigenous population. The main Norwegian Sámi NGO is a driving force in establishing and governing indigenous spaces, but is now one of several and often competing organizations due to specialization (new organizations form to promote specific subgroups' interests) and partisanization (organizations compete in elections to the Sámediggi representative organ). Social media facilitate communication across organizational divides, but do not produce any unified local indigenous “voice”. Private businesses and public cultural institutions take part in establishing and governing indigenous spaces – the former often in complete autonomy from Sámi NGOs, the latter more likely to seek cooperation or coordination. Local and regional state-based actors generally do not take initiatives to establish indigenous spaces, but involve themselves as co-organizers with Sámi leads and as sources of (often unstable) economic support. The state-based Sámediggi is increasingly proactive: financing, facilitating contact between actors, and occasionally participating directly in urban indigenous governance. The Sámediggi provides a unifying representative voice at the macro level that is missing at the local level.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous urbanization
• Sámi urbanization
• indigenous self-government
• local indigenous self-government
• network governance
• Nordic indigenous policy

Acknowledgements

Some interviews in Oslo were performed together with Marte Winsvold (Institute for Social Research). Other NUORGÁV researchers supplied feedback during the writing process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 For other applications of network governance theory on Sámi politics, see Berg-Nordlie (2015a, 2015b, 2017), Josefsen (2008, 2014, 2015), and Ulvevadet (2015).

2 The author is not a member of any political party or organization mentioned in the text, but is a parents’ representative in the Oslo Sámi kindergarten, has volunteered at the Oslo Sámi House, and is administrator of one social media-based network for Oslo Sámi. In 2017, the NUORGÁV project organized a conference, An urban future for Sápmi?, together with Sverresborg and as part of the Tråante2017 celebrations.

3 In 2013, NKF received 21.5% of votes in the constituency. In 2017, they received 20.7% while NSR grew from 16% to 21.8%.

4 A siida is a traditional Sámi social unit in which a group of people owns and manages resources collectively.

5 On 1 January 2018, Sør-Trøndelag and Nord-Trøndelag Counties merged to form Trøndelag County.

6 In 2013, ÅSG received 34.6% of votes. In 2017, this dropped to 26.8% while NSR grew from 29.7% to 38.3%.

7 Oslo’s municipal Sámi kindergarten and Alta’s NSR-owned kindergarten are Sámi-only. Alta also has a Sámi section in a municipal kindergarten, similar to Trondheim. There is also a Sámi section in Alta’s Student Union-owned on-campus kindergarten (Samskipnaden.no n.d.).

8 Traditional Sámi singing style.

9 In 2013, NSR received 34.2% of votes in the South Norway constituency, and in 2017, 38.1%. Sámit lulde received 9.8% in 2013. They did not run in 2017, but the local chapter of the party SáB focused its rhetoric on urban and Oslo Sámi issues during this election, and received 10.4% of the votes.

Additional information

Funding

The article is part of the project NUORGÁV, funded by the Norwegian Research Council’s Programme for Sámi Studies (Project number 234237).