Sápmi and its cultural history

Open Seminars and Webinars, September 2026 – April 2027

To coincide with the submission of the Final Report of the Truth Commission for the Sámi People in Sweden to the Ministry of Culture on September 30, 2026, Kin Museum of Contemporary Art—in collaboration with Várdduo: Centre for Sámi Research at Umeå University, Tjállegoahtie Sámi Writers’ Centre, Stockholm University of the Arts, and HDK-Valand—is organizing a series of seminars and webinars on Sámi history and culture. The speakers are Sámi scholars and cultural practitioners, and the seminars will be held in English.

The series addresses a broad audience of arts and cultural professionals, researchers, and others who wish to deepen their knowledge of Europe’s Indigenous people and related issues. The focus is on the history and cultural history of Sápmi, as well as contemporary Sámi experiences, conditions, and forms of cultural expression. The writer and literary scholar Harald Gaski serves as an advisor to the seminar series.

The seminars will take place at the project’s partner institutions across Sweden, as well as at Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhus in Stockholm, and will also be livestreamed on YouTube. The series forms part of the exhibition On the Ugly and the Beautiful: Johan Turi, Outi Pieski, and Johanna Minde, which opens at Kin on September 5, 2026, and runs through April 24, 2027. It is the first exhibition in nearly a century to present drawings by the legendary reindeer herder, hunter, and writer Johan Turi. The exhibition also features works by artists Outi Pieski and Johanna Minde.

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Each seminar centers on a lecture by an invited researcher, artist, writer, activist, or other contributor, followed by a Q&A and open discussion.

Seminar 1
4:30–7:00 pm, Tuesday, 1 September, 2026
(online only)

The Wolf Hunter Who Became a Sámi Classic: Johan Turi’s Art Viewed and Assessed from an Indigenous Aesthetic Perspective

Harald Gaski, professor of literature and writer, highlights the fact that it took a hundred years for Johan Turi (1854–1936) to be recognized as an artist. For a long time, outside the Sámi world, Turi was known primarily as the author of Muitalus sámiid birra (An Account of the Sámi, 1910), the first book written in Sámi by a Sámi writer—a work that gave voice to Sámi perspectives outside a religious context. To those who knew Turi, he was above all a highly skilled wolf hunter and a bearer of cultural knowledge. He possessed a strong desire to communicate and to pass on his experiences. When his art was exhibited in Copenhagen in 1928, his colored drawings were described as “youthful and entirely uninfluenced.” The works were praised for their freshness and introduced motifs from a geographical area that was perceived as peripheral in Copenhagen. Today, Turi is one of the most frequently cited Sámi authors and is regarded as an Indigenous philosopher—a source of inspiration for Sámi cultural revitalization.

Harald Gaski was born and raised by the river Deatnu/Tana on the Norwegian side of Sápmi. Gaski is an author, editor, and a retired professor in Sámi culture and literature at UiT—The Arctic University of Norway and Sámi allaskuvla/Sámi University of Applied Sciences. Gaski’s research focuses on Sámi culture and literature, both oral and written, as well as Sámi values, worldview, aesthetics, and Indigenous critical studies. He was instrumental in establishing Sámi literature as an academic field from the mid 1980s onward. Gaski has also translated Sámi literature and Nils-Aslak Valkeapää’s poetry into Norwegian and English. His most recent book is the trilingual Vuoiŋŋalašvuohta/Samisk åndelighet: An Essay on the Sámi People’s Spiritual Connection to Land from 2025. Also noteworthy is his anthology of Sámi literature, Myths, Tales and Poetry from Four Centuries of Sámi Literature, published in 2020. His first book is from 1987, Med ord skal tyvene fordrives, an account and analysis of narrative juoigan (Sámi folk music) texts. Gaski has been a visiting scholar at several universities internationally. He served on the International Research Advisory Panel of New Zealand’s Māori Centre of Research Excellence at Auckland University for ten years (2006–2015). In 2006 he was the recipient of the Nordic Sámi Language Prize, Gollegiella, and in 2024 he was awarded an honorary doctorate at Umeå University in Sweden.

Seminar 2
1:00–3:30 pm, Thursday, 22 October 2026
Várdduo: Centre for Sámi Research, Umeå University

Bound to the Land: Connection to the Land and the Loss of It in Sámi Communities

The seminar consists of three lectures. Gudrun Norstedt presents A Border Matter: Citizenship and Grazing Rights in the Northernmost Fennoscandia, 1800–1850. Åsa Össbo’s lecture is titled Protecting Reindeer Herders’ Land? The Contradictory Consequences of Establishing the Cultivation Boundary in Norrbotten County, 1867–1890. Finally, Kristina Sehlin MacNeil will discuss Contested Lands, Changing Worlds: Sámi and Indigenous Relationships to the Land in a Time of Geopolitical Change.

Gudrun Norstedt’s research explores how the Sámi used and allocated natural resources among themselves before the first Reindeer Husbandry Act came into force in 1886. She focuses particularly on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the Sámi still constituted the majority population across much of the so-called Lappmark and held a majority of lay judge positions in the district courts. A central part of her research is based on K. B. Wiklund’s collection of transcriptions, comprising more than 2,500 documents from district court records relating to land use in the Lappmark between 1645 and 1845. Norstedt has digitized the collection and is engaged in the long-term development of a geographical database containing information on every individual and place mentioned in these records. Alongside this work, she conducts more focused studies of specific topics, including Forest Sámi fishing practices.

Åsa Össbo is a researcher at Várdduo, where she works on a range of research projects that focus on energy production and land-use conflicts in Sámi areas. In 2025, she participated in the project Perspectives from the Periphery: When the Global Energy Transition Meets the Nordic Hinterlands, which examined how different stakeholders envision the transition to renewable energy, and how that transition is implemented and contested in northern Sweden, Finland, and Greenland. From 2025 to 2030, she is a member of the research program KOSA: Conflict or Cooperation? Learn from the History, Tensions and Conflicts Surrounding Land Use in Sweden’s Arctic Region, a collaborative initiative involving researchers from Luleå University of Technology, Ájtte: Swedish Mountain and Sámi Museum in Jokkmokk, Umeå University, and Lund University. Össbo received her PhD in history in 2014 with a thesis on Swedish hydropower expansion in the reindeer-herding area. Since then, she has, among other things, taught Sámi studies. Her research focuses on historical and contemporary Indigenous land use, conflicts surrounding natural resource extraction and the consequences of the energy transition in Indigenous territories and northern rural regions, as well as Indigenous labor history, with a particular emphasis on the Arctic.

Kristina Sehlin-MacNeil is associate professor of Sámi Studies and, since 1 March 2026, she has served as senior lecturer at Várdduo. Her research examines conflicts and power relations affecting Indigenous peoples, with a particular focus on cultural, structural, extractive, and lateral violence in Indigenous and local communities. She has developed and applied the concept of “extractive violence” to analyze the impacts of resource extraction on Indigenous communities and continues to advance research on conflict in collaboration with those communities by investigating lateral violence and its connections to external pressures. She leads and participates in several research projects, among which an ongoing project on lateral violence forms a central part of her work. She is also a researcher in the project Reassembling Democracy in Sweden: Trans-Disciplinary Research on Minority Narratives, Civic Imagination, and Participatory Futures in Sweden and Beyond, in collaboration with researchers at Linköping University and funded by the Swedish Research Council. In addition, she is a co-investigator in the Canadian knowledge network MinErAl (Knowledge Network on Mining Encounters and Indigenous Sustainable Livelihoods).

Seminar 3
4:30–7:00 pm, Monday, 30 November 2026
Stockholm University of the Arts

The History of Duodji and the Forces at Work in a Duddjon Process

Duojár and Professor Gunvor Guttorm lectures on the history of duodji (Sámi craft) and on what it means to work from an idea in which improvisation serves as a creative method. This approach is rooted in her own duodji practice—a process of making through which she explores a particular wood blank that interests her. When working with natural materials, improvisation becomes an integral part of the process, with an outcome that may differ substantially from the original idea. One example is the ládjogahpir (the so-called “horn hat”), and more specifically the fierra, the internal structure concealed within the hat. Why did the ládjogahpir, which was worn in everyday life across Sápmi from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, fall out of use? Through her own improvisational work with the fierra, Guttorm explores possible answers while engaging with a broader range of duodji practices.

Gunvor Guttorm is a part-time professor of duodji at Sámi allaskuvla / Sámi University of Applied Sciences in Guovdageaidnu/Kautokeino. She also runs her own business, GG Duodjikonsult. Her research focuses on duodji in a contemporary context and from an Indigenous perspective. Throughout her work, she has sought to understand contemporary duodji and duddjon by examining the role and significance they have had—and continue to have—in Sámi society. Her own duodji practice forms an integral part of her artistic research.
Among her most recent research projects is Architecture of Aroha (2024). She also participates in the research project Textile Heritage (2025–2030), led by Konstfack University in Stockholm. Between 2020 and 2022, she served as the Norwegian Sámi project leader for the major initiative Arctic Indigenous Arts and Design Archives, which brought together practitioners and institutions from across Sápmi. Together with Professor Harald Gaski, she co-edited the groundbreaking anthology DuodjiReader (2022). Further, in 2022, she co-curated the exhibition Arctic Highways with Dan Jåma, Tomas Colbengtson, and Britta Marakatt Labba. She has also served as main editor of the journal Dieđut.

Seminar 4
5:00 pm, Wednesday, 27 January 2027
HDK-Valand, Gothenburg

Art and Life

Artist Britta Marakatt-Labba reflects on her artistic practice and how it has evolved as part of life in a reindeer-herding family.

Born in Ađevuopmi/Idivuoma and now living in Badje Sohppar/Övre Soppero (both in Giron/Kiruna Municipality on the Swedish side of Sápmi), Britta Marakatt-Labba has for more than half a century been one of the most influential Sámi artists. Since her international breakthrough at Documenta in Kassel in 2017, she has also come to be recognized as one of Northern Europe’s most acclaimed contemporary artists. Her work depicts everyday life, political and historical events, and motifs drawn from Sámi mythology. A recurring figure is the primordial mother wearing the red horn-shaped cap (ládjogáphir), once common throughout the North and East Sámi regions until it was prohibited by the Church during the nineteenth century.
Marakatt-Labba is best known for her embroideries, but she also tells her stories through printmaking, sculpture, and installation. Like the Sámi joik, her narratives often have neither a clear beginning nor a definitive end. Panoramic landscapes of white mountain plateaus provide the backdrop for richly detailed scenes unfolding in the foreground. In an early interview, she pointed out that textiles were something nomadic Sámi reindeer herders always carried with them during their annual migrations: they were lightweight, easy to pack, and easy to transport. In the same way, her own textiles ultimately originate in nature—and that is where they belong.

Seminar 5
5:00 pm, Thursday, 4 February 2027
Tjállegoáhte Sámi Writers’ Centre, Jokkmokk

Johan Turi’s Account of Sámi Schooling: Towards a Sámi Epistemology

Professor Emerita of Pedagogy Asta Mitkija Balto lectures on Sámi education and the Sámi struggle, dating back to the early twentieth century, for greater influence over the content of education. The realization of a genuinely Sámi school—one that upholds and passes on Sámi values—remains an ongoing endeavor. The Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in Norway, Sweden, and Finland have documented the hardships experienced by the Sámi as their language, culture, and identity were systematically suppressed. It is now more urgent than ever for educational and cultural institutions to help raise awareness and revitalize what has been lost. In his 1910 book, Johan Turi pointed out that Sámi children were educated from a non-Sámi perspective, one that, according to Turi, displaced their inherited Sámi worldview with foreign values. The processes of assimilation and colonization that Turi described continue to this day and affect Sámi people of all generations. Decolonization means placing Sámi knowledge, language, and values at the center—it means relearning how to be Sámi.

Asta Mitkija Balto was born in 1948 in Kárášjohka/Karasjok, on the Norwegian side of Sápmi. She grew up on a small farm where her family lived off the surrounding natural resources, relying on fishing, hunting, and berry picking. They also kept reindeer. When she started boarding school at the age of seven, she did not speak Norwegian. She is the mother of a son and a daughter and a proud grandmother. Balto completed her studies at the University of Oslo in 1986 and was appointed as a researcher at the Nordic Sámi Institute, a unique institution established by and for the Sámi community. From 1989 to 1994, she served as director of the Sámi Education Council under the Norwegian Ministry of Education. Until 2015, she held a number of positions at Sámi allaskuvla / Sámi University of Applied Sciences in Guovdageaidnu/Kautokeino, including rector, vice-rector, lecturer, assistant professor, and associate professor.

In 2014 and again in 2024, she was appointed to participate in the accreditation of the Aha Pūnana Leo language program in Hawaiʻi, together with Indigenous professors from around the world. Since 2024, she has also served as an ethics adviser to BIRGEJUPMI, a Horizon Europe research and innovation project. She has been awarded an honorary doctorate by WINU (International Indigenous University) in recognition of her lifelong contributions to Sámi and other Indigenous education. Through her work to promote the revitalization and renewal of Sámi and other Indigenous languages and cultures, she has helped restore people’s pride and self-esteem while strengthening Sámi research and knowledge production in support of greater intellectual self-determination.

Seminar 6
6:00 pm, Thursday, 18 March 2027
Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhus, Stockholm

Six Years After the Girjas Judgment: Where Do We Stand Today?

Reindeer herder and President of the Swedish Sámi National Association (SSR), Matti Blind Berg, reflects on the landmark Girjas judgment and the challenges that remain today. In 2020, the Swedish Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Girjas Sámi community, granting it the authority to administer small game hunting and fishing within its territory. The judgment has become a widely celebrated legal precedent while also generating considerable debate. Six years on, what is the current situation? What have been the concrete consequences of the judgment, and what lies ahead?

It was during Matti Blind Berg’s tenure as President of the Swedish Sámi National Association that the Girjas Sámi community secured its historic victory over the state’s control of small game hunting and fishing within its territory. The Supreme Court’s ruling established that, on the basis of the legal principle of immemorial prescription, the Girjas Sámi community—and not the state—has the right to decide when, how, and by whom small game hunting and fishing may take place on its lands. Among other things, this enables the community to restrict hunting and fishing during particularly sensitive periods, such as the reindeer calving season in May and the calf-marking period in July. Until 2020, permits for hunting and fishing within the Girjas Sámi community were issued by the County Administrative Board; since the judgment, these decisions have been made by the Sámi community itself. The ruling established an important legal precedent and prompted several other Sámi communities to bring similar cases against the Swedish state. To date, however, no further judgments have been delivered.

Matti Blind Berg is a reindeer herder in the Girjas Sámi community and President of Sámiid Riikkasearvi / the Swedish Sámi National Association (SSR). He lives in Puoltsa, in Kiruna Municipality, and has his roots in the Girjas Sámi community, where he previously served as Chair. At various times, he has also been a member of the Sámi Parliament for the Sámi Land Party (Samelandspartiet), the political branch of SSR.

Seminar 7
5:30 pm, Thursday, 22 April 2027
Kin Museum of Contemporary Art

Six Months After the Truth Commission’s Final Report: What Happens Next?

Senior Lecturer and PhD in Sámi Studies Krister Stoor reflects on developments in the six months since the Truth Commission for the Sámi People published its final report, and on what may lie ahead. What positive and negative consequences might the report have for the Sámi on the Swedish side of Sápmi? And will it lead to reconciliation?
Unlike several comparable commissions, the word “reconciliation” does not appear in the Commission’s official name. In its submission to the Ministry of Culture, however, the Sámi Parliament emphasized that the work of the Truth Commission was intended to be followed by a process of reconciliation, provided that the Commission’s recommendations were implemented.

Krister Stoor, from Orusjohka/Årosjokk, is Senior Lecturer and holds a PhD in Sámi studies at the Department of Language Studies / Sámi dutkan and Várdduo: Centre for Sámi Research at Umeå University. His research explores how narratives embedded in joik and other traditional forms of storytelling continue to resonate in contemporary contexts. His primary research area is intangible cultural heritage as a force in society, encompassing both joik and oral traditions.

Bild 1-2: Johan Turi