Hello,

There is an indigenous people called the Sami (sometimes spelled also
'Saami' or 'Sámi', earlier referred as the 'Lapps') that lives in northern
Scandinavia, Lapland. The Sami region extends over four countries: Norway,
Sweden, Finland and Russia. In each country Sami artefacts have been
collected in museums. This results in four different repatriation issues
handled in four different ways.

I used to work with the Sami collections in the National Museum of Finland
between 1998-2003 and got to observe some interesting behavior. During this
period, a new Sami Museum (www.siida.fi) opened in Finnish Lapland. The
spokesman of the Sami Museun indicated in several occasions that it is their
intention to get the Sami collections from the National Museum (NM)
transferred to Siida as a form of repatriation. But no official demand was
ever presented and thus the NM escaped from officially taking position on
the subject. However, knowing about these intentions, the staff at the NM
reacted in a peculiar way. Whenever the staff of Siida needed to use some of
the Sami material at the NM, they were treated in quite rude, almost hostile
way. A Sami journalist once wanted to do a news coverage about the Saami
collections, and this episode ended with one of the NM employees yelling at
the journalist on the street in front of the museum. It seemed to me as if
the idea of the Sami claiming their rights to their cultural heritage posed
a threat on people who call themselves museum professionals.

At the same time, I wrote my master's thesis on the Sami artefact collection
at the NM. Considering the fact that 75% of the collection has arrived to
the museum between 1900-1939,  the Sami collection played an important role
in the emerging Finland as a country and Finns as a nation. After the WW II,
Sami collection lost its function in this sense, and so did the collecting
of Sami heritage. For the purpose of the collecting was never to document
Sami culture as such, but instead to document how Sami culture was different
(=worse) from the culture of the Finns. Considering the purpose-oriented
nature of the Sami collecion, it is difficult to see any reason why this
collection should stay at the NM, where its colonialistic character only
increases, thanks to the behavior of the staff. In another context (Sami
Museum), in the middle of the land of the Sami and despite of its historical
"burden", it might be a source of inspiration for many young and older Sami.
Steps to this direction have already been taken at least in Sweden, where
some of the Sami artifacts of the Nordic Museum (Nordiska Museet) have been
placed in Swedish Sami Museum on permanent basis. Hopefully, Finland will
follow some day.


Nina Puurunen
Curator
Hotel and Restaurant Museum
Finland

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