Today Has Been Hard: A Sonic Account on the Simultaneous Fall of Human Rights in Finland and Norway

Abstract

25 February 2023 has been hard to the Sámi indigenous peoples of northern Fennoscandia and Russian Kola. In fact, it will be undoubtedly remembered as one of the toughest days in Sámi recent history. On one side, a group of young Sámi activists (NSR) occupied the Oil and Energy Department, in Oslo, as more than 500 days passed since the Supreme Court concluded that the colossal windfarm in Fosen (Norway) violates Sámi human rights. Despite declaring the power plant illegal, the turbines were left operative thus hindering reindeer husbandry and the related indigenous stewardship of the land. Simultaneously in Helsinki, on the other side, the Sámi Parliament Act – which after decades of struggles and governmental stall would have ensured unprecedented self-identification and self-determination rights to the Sámi within Finnish law – was once more rejected. Based on primary material collected during fieldwork or retrieved from extensive social media review, the paper recounts the sonic and musical build-up to the mentioned date in order to capture and map sentiments, values and resilient acts of refusal articulated by Sámi artists and activists around the respective struggles. Through binaural recordings of rallying cries, audiovisual cues in live concerts, individual and collective joik performances, and many other modes of sonic demonstration, a series of histories of listening will be presented to advance an analysis of the controversial and fragile political status of the Sámi, as well as to address the most recent violation of fundamental human rights of a “minority on its own land” in the colonial European North.