Writing-Weaving Sámi Feminisms : Stories and Conversations

Abstract: This dissertation explores, illuminates, and analyses Sámi feminist knowledges, conceptualised as diverse and fluid feminist knowledges that both arise within and create Sámi realities. Centrally, it contributes to and exemplifies Sámi inquiry and conversations where different people continuously create and re-create Sámi feminisms in various contexts. This study focuses on feminist articulations and dialogue from a Sámi context, Sámi feminist theoretical, epistemic, and methodological approaches, and Sámi feminist contributions to gender studies, especially in the Swedish context. First, the study contributes to reworking hegemonic gender studies in Sweden. For example, it discusses Sámi feminist erasure in Swedish feminist scholarship, gendered settler colonialism, and the intersections of gender and Indigeneity. In dialogue with previous Sámi feminist scholarship and global Indigenous feminist theories, the author argues that gendered settler colonialism against the Sámi people manifests and continues to manifest in several ways. These manifestations include gendered colonial law, the gendered impact on Sámi economies, gendered violence and its colonial intersections, the interplay of gender and religion, and gendered and sexualised epistemicide. Second, the study foregrounds a shift in the analysis of gender within Indigenous studies from the tradition’s margins to the centre. For example, it foregrounds Indigenous and Sámi feminist contributions to understandings and enactments of decolonisation and resurgence – the critical examination and dismantling of colonial structures of power and a (re)imagination and (re)creation of the world grounded in Indigenous experiences and world-making practices. Contrary to being a divisive force in the struggle against settler colonial dispossession, the author conceptualises Sámi feminisms as integral to inclusive processes of decolonisation and resurgence. By exploring the visions and strengths of Sámi feminisms, the dissertation centres on the contributions of Sámi feminisms to Indigenous healing, regeneration, and thriving. Third, the study contributes to feminist epistemologies and methodologies. Significantly, it foregrounds Indigenous and Sámi epistemes as relational, interconnected, and response-able ways of knowing, being, and doing beyond colonial world-making practices. To conceptualise Sámi feminist inquiry in a way that resonates with Indigenous epistemes, it introduces the conceptualisation of related knowledges. Furthermore, the study explores and develops Sámi feminist methodologies using three approaches: writing-weaving, learning in conversations, and mujttalit – storytelling and remembering. Finally, the study contributes to the broader scholarly project of developing an analysis of Nordic colonialisms, especially on the settler colonial impact on Sámi life-worlds. The main body of the dissertation comprises an introductory essay and seven articles, including individually written and co-authored texts.