The embodied boundaries of ethnicity

Abstract

Drawing on interviews and autobiographic writings by Sámi, this article examines the construction of an ethnic category, the Sámi as an embodied phenomenon. The article investigates what creates the ethnic difference between the Sámi and the majority populations since many modern Sámi are not always very different from the majority. By applying the theory of performativity, the article concludes that the ethnic boundary of the Sámi is an embodied question. People who are born Sámi are Sámi by the expected particularity of their body, which can appear as outward appearance and/or mental characteristics. Their Sáminess can also take the form of ‘Sámi DNA’. Being a cultural Sámi is possible, natural, permitted and desirable for a person who is born Sámi. One’s origin is thus a performative which both enables and naturalizes an individual’s Sámi ethnicity. It produces a Sámi body by naturalizing certain bodily qualities as well as a certain cultural identity.

Keywords

Body embodiment ethnicity performativity The Sámi

In the 60’s and 70’s it was recommended that Skolt Sámi give their children away to be raised in Southern Finland. Dozens of children were adopted, which is a lot in a small tribe. This is a very difficult, and even taboo, subject. Because of this there are even Sámi in Finland who don’t know that they are Sámi.

The Sámi are not aiming at returning completely to traditions; electricity and cars are needed in the North. But there are Sámi who want to revive the old way of life close to nature. To live like Sámi, not like Finns.

These quotations are from a magazine interview with a Sámi woman (Image, 2008). The first quotation tells a harsh story about the history of colonialist practices experienced by the Sámi people. The second shows in a more positive light how many contemporary Sámi are trying to revitalize Sámi culture and ethnicity by living like Sámi, which means a traditional way of life close to nature. The Sámi, who live in the northern parts of Finland, Sweden, Norway and Russia, is the only ethnic group in the European Union which is recognized as an indigenous people.¹ Many modern Sámi live in cities and practise modern occupations even though especially reindeer herding, fishing and hunting are still considered to be the most authentic Sámi way of life and have great cultural importance for the indigenous Sámi people.²

The quotations above also include other points on which this article will focus. First, if it is possible to be a Sámi without knowing it, one must ask how a person’s Sámi ethnicity can be determined. The grounds for drawing the ethnic boundary between an ethnic Sámi and a non-Sámi are particularly interesting since many modern Sámi are not always very different – or are not different at all – from the majority population in their way of life, culture and language. What creates ethnic differences? The idea that someone can be a Sámi without knowing it – in other words, that there can be an unconscious ethnic presence within a person – has induced me to examine a category of identity, Sáminess, as an embodied phenomenon and led me to ask what finally creates and produces an ethnic body. I suggest that there are several embodied elements that produce ethnic difference, creating a Sámi body. I argue that the embodied elements that construct and define Sámi ethnicity can be understood as performatives of ethnicity which actually racialize the category of Sámi ethnicity. A second question arises from the distinction embodied in the concept of ‘living like Sámi, not like Finns’. What does it mean to live like a Sámi? How is the ethnic particularity lived and performed, and what consequences does it have for a person’s subjectivity?

Up to the present day, the Sámi have experienced strong pressure to assimilate as a result of the official policies of the states in which they live. Along with the international development of human rights and the new cooperation of the Sámi, which began in the 1940s, Sámi identity has been narratively reconstructed. The history, culture and distinctiveness of the Sámi have started to function as the basis of a new political self-understanding and political claims (e.g. Eidheim, 1997). The Sámi have been recognized as an indigenous people, a status which in northern areas has become, paradoxically, a desirable one.³ The new conception of the Sámi and Sáminess can be referred to as Sámi discourse, an established and dominant way of perceiving and talking about the Sámi and their ‘essence’, including a strong emphasis on the relationship with nature and traditions. In political arenas, Sámi identity is performed as an indigenous identity inherent to ethnically Sámi people (Valkonen, 2009). As a result of these developments, the stigma of Sáminess caused by the long-lasting negative attitude of the majority populations towards the Sámi, as well as the assimilation policy, has nearly disappeared. Sámi identity has become desirable and, in many ways, a significant source of strength and self-dignity for many Sámi. At the same time, ethnic distinctions and demarcation have become important issues at both the collective and individual levels. For instance, in Finnish Lapland, there is a continuous political struggle over how the Sámi group should be defined and who, at the individual level, are ‘real’ indigenous people. Who is a Sámi is an essential question politically, socially and emotionally.

This article analyses how the Sámi become ethnic bodily subjects. I apply Butler’s theory of power concerning the deconstruction of the normative matrix that produces two natural genders. Power is thus understood as performative, that is, producing, compelling and repetitive. Byrne (2006, 2011) has considered how the notion of gender performativity might be productively extended to race performativity. She has shown how the notion of performativity is equally pertinent to understanding race, allowing for the possibility of understanding racialized identities as constructed but also deeply felt. I argue that ethnicity is one of the ways in which subjects come into being. It is a modality through which subjectivities are constructed. As the material in this article demonstrates, becoming a Sámi subject involves negotiating and bodily repeating ethnic norms. Thus, ethnic definitions and subjectivity must be seen fundamentally as questions of power and be approached as products of multiple processes of knowledge and power. The article examines the drawing of ethnic boundaries and ethnic performativity from a corporal perspective, enabling both the deconstruction of the naturalized category of a Sámi and the Sámi and discussion concerning the corporeality of living and experiencing life as a Sámi.

The material used in the article consists of seven in-depth interviews and six short autobiographic writings by Sámi which I collected for my doctoral dissertation (Valkonen, 2009), which deals with the collective Sámi identity as one people, a nation and an indigenous people, as well as a personal ethnic identity as performatively constructed and maintained. The Sámi interviewed for my research live in Finland and are Finnish citizens. They vary in terms of age, gender, occupation, home region, cultural background and language group. For my dissertation, I also collected newspaper articles⁴ concerning the Sámi from 1995 to 2009, as well as official documents, publications and notices of the Finnish Sámi Parliament and declarations of the Sámi Council. The newspaper articles and documents have been analysed, and in this article, they function as background data when analysing the interviews and autobiographic writings: How do people’s ways of thinking about Sáminess reflect the official Sámi discourse? I have examined the interviews and autobiographic writings as discourses, as ways of thinking and talking about the Sámi people, the Sámi life and Sámi experiences. I have focused particularly on repeated elements that define Sáminess. Performativity is thus both a theory and a deconstructive method in my analysis. Consequently, it is possible to analyse the empowering, enabling and authorizing qualities of power, as well as its regulating and compelling aspects.

Embodied subjectivity

Butler’s (1999, 1993) theory of power originally concerned the normative construction of sex and gender. Sex is a cultural norm, a discourse, which governs the performative materialization of bodies into two genders. According to Butler’s (1993: 2–3) definition, performativity is ‘the reiterative and citational practice by which discourse produces the effects that it names’. Gender is thus a phenomenon which is produced by language and bodily performing and as such is an action and product of power. In other words, the discourse of sex is materialized as individuals through a repetitive process in which an individual performs gender procedures – culturally established patterns of gender – and attains subjectivity. Attaining subjectivity ensures the position of agency and socially recognized existence (Butler, 1993, 1997). Performative acts – that is, the performatives – are acts of realization and enforcement, a domain in which power acts as a discourse (Butler, 1993: 225).

An essential part of gender performativity is the idea of the heterosexual matrix according to which a certain anatomy and physiology – that is, a female or male body – is naturally and inevitably followed by a certain sexual orientation (desire for the opposite sex) and a certain social role and identity (a woman or a man) (Butler, 1999). Becoming a female or a male subject occurs through the bodily reiteration of the behaviour and gestures ordered by the matrix. Otherwise, one’s femininity or masculinity – womanhood or manhood – may be called into question. Power thus always precedes the subject, but it loses its appearance of priority when it is wielded by the subject (Butler, 1997: 13). As Butler (1997: 11) states, ‘No individual becomes a subject without first becoming subjected’.

In addition to the heterosexual matrix, an individual’s life is regulated by many other matrices as well (Butler, 1993: 8). One such matrix is ethnicity. I argue that Sámi ethnicity can be seen as a matrix, an order of power, in which a body determined by certain processes and conventions of power enables – even requires – a certain cultural identity. An individual recognized as a Sámi by birth can ‘genuinely’ be a cultural Sámi. The Sámi themselves regard this as natural. According to Fortier (1999: 48), concentrating on the sexing of bodies neglects and ignores the processes by which the bodies are ethnicized. The idea of performativity indeed emphasizes that a person does not simply and ontologically just happen to belong to some group – for instance, just happen to be a Sámi – but necessitates analysis of the culturally established patterns and discourses defining the criteria of belonging (cf. Bell, 1999: 3). Similarly, Byrne (2011) considers whether race is a norm through which bodies, and subjects, are rendered culturally intelligible, asserting ‘This would raise questions about how subjects are constructed, not just through the reiteration of gendered norms, but also racialized ones’ (p.6).

Applying a theory of gender matrix in ethnicity is not an unproblematic parallel. According to Butler (1999: xvi), race and gender should not be understood as straightforward analogies, but categories of race and gender always function as background for each other, and they are articulated most powerfully through one another. However, in certain historical, political and social contexts, some differences and social divisions may be more significant than others (Yuval-Davis, 2006). I argue that without underrating the significance of gendered and sexualized discourses and practices regulating the Sámi ethnicity and the deeply gendered performatives of Sáminess – topics that would need their own detailed analyses – in contemporary politicized Sámi situation, ethnicity ‘as such’ is the most essential category producing subjectivity, common identity and belonging as well as experiences of inequality and oppression. The historical stigma and oppression connected to the category of Sáminess has transformed into important source of subjectivity, self-dignity and indigenous political citizenship in postcolonial Lapland. Therefore, for the purpose of analysing the logic of ethnic exclusion and inclusion and the normativity of an ethnic category, the theory of performativity and notion of queer are put in action as general frameworks of understanding these questions.

The theory of performativity has been an important sources for queer theory and queer studies concerning sex and sexuality and their normative assumptions (e.g. Hall, 2003). Queer theory became a prevailing notion in the 1990s to designate anti-normative politics, cultures and identity formations. Broadly, queer theory denotes diversity within unity and constitutes ‘an all-inclusive category of subversive and anti-normative cultural and political practices of identity’ (Fortier, 2001: 406). Within cultural theory, as Fortier (2001: 406) points out, queer theory (as well as the concept of ‘diaspora’) has focused on the complexities of postmodern and postcolonial forms of belonging through its intervention in issues of time, space, identity and embodiment. The concepts of ‘queer’ and ‘diaspora’ have led to a decisive change of orientation away from primordial identities established alternatively by either culture or nature (Fortier, 2001: 406). Such a critique of regulative identity categories opens new perspectives also on ethnicity: ‘who passes as a Sámi’, who has permission to embody the cultural Sámi identity and how Sámi identities are fixed and secured (cf. Ahmed, 1999: 89).

An essential point of ‘queering’ social identities is that even though ‘body’ refers to a living organism, social structures, hierarchies and sexual differences are also bodily experienced and lived. The same is also true of ethnic differences. There are many mechanisms that produce ethnic differences, and each one shapes and determines in its own particular way the criteria for belonging among the Sámi. The ethnic boundaries of Sáminess are constructed through several embodied axes which co-produce different bodily conditions of being Sámi.

The performative of recognition

The Sámi of Finland have a constitutional status and position as an indigenous people as well as cultural autonomy in the Sámi region founded by The Sámi Act (1995/974). This cultural autonomy is implemented by the Sámi Parliament, which is elected every four years. The Sámi Act defines a legal Sámi subject – that is, a subject who is eligible and entitled to vote in elections for the Sámi Parliament – as follows:

For the purpose of this Act, a Sámi means a person who considers himself a Sámi, provided:

(1) That he himself or at least one of his parents or grandparents has learnt Sámi as his first language;

(2) That he is a descendent of a person who has been entered in a land, taxation or population register as a mountain, forest or fishing Lapp; or

(3) That at least one of his parents has or could have been registered as an elector for an election to the Sámi Delegation or the Sámi Parliament. (The Sámi Act, 1995/974)

An indigenous Sámi subject, as recognized by the Sámi definition above, does not in each case correspond with the conception of an ethnic Sámi. The definition has been criticized as being far too open and vague. According to the definition, a Sámi can be defined in three different ways, but particularly the linguistic basis (subsection 1) has been considered as defining an ethnic Sámi most precisely, whereas the Lapp basis (subsection 2) is considered only as showing that a person has a Lapp ancestor (Valkonen, 2009). The Sámi language thus seems to be the most important determinant and maintainer of ethnicity even though the official definition does not actually require true Sámi language skills. The descendants of former Sámi speakers, whether they themselves speak Sámi or not, are seen as embodying Sámi ethnicity, which is most importantly determined by the Sámi language. At the individual level, mastering the Sámi language is not the most important factor determining Sámi ethnicity. However, the Sámi are able both to recognize each other and to distinguish themselves from the majority population. How is the line between a Sámi and a non-Sámi drawn, as it is known that not all ethnic Sámi speak the Sámi language or live like Sámi?

Traditionally, people have been classified as Sámi based on personal recognition. At the local level, it has always been known who is a Sámi and who is not (Müller-Wille, 1971/1996). According to the generally accepted principle of the Sámi community, the community must recognize its members. A person is a Sámi if the Sámi community or another Sámi recognizes and accepts her/him as a Sámi. The act of recognition can therefore be considered as a performative which verifies an individual’s Sáminess. When a person is recognized as a Sámi, the potential to be a Sámi opens for her/him, since recognition is more than mere description. A performative succeeds since it ‘draws on and covers over the constitutive conventions by which it is mobilized’ (Butler, 1993: 227). Hence, borrowing the already existing structures of a subject ensures the productive force of the performative.

But on what is the recognition based – what structures of a subject does it borrow – if recognition is not possible on the basis of outward cultural signs? In his study concerning the interethnic relations of the Utsjoki Sámi village, Müller-Wille (1971/1996) divides the inhabitants biologically into three different populations: Sámi, Finns and people of ‘mixed blood’, one of whose parents is a Sámi and the other a Finn (p.9). Ethnically, the inhabitants are divided into two groups: Sámi and Finns (Müller-Wille, 1971/1996: 9). In his study, the ethnic identities of these people were determined by their cultural socialization: they had been socialized into either Sámi or Finnish culture. Consequently, the ethnicity of a biological Sámi was not automatically Sámi. As a result of Finnish influence, native Sámi may have become Finns from an ethnic point of view. Sámi ethnicity was thus connected with certain cultural practices and a way of life which were understood as fairly well-established and permanent elements maintaining Sáminess (cf. Barth, 1969).

Ultimately, ethnicity is connected with origin and blood and in that sense with a (biological) body in Müller-Wille’s study: those who are biologically Sámi are also potentially ethnic Sámi. This conception is dominant in my research material as well. The Sámi classify themselves as Sámi without exception according to their parent’s Sáminess and also recognize another person as a Sámi precisely on the basis of family origin. It seems that one is indeed born Sámi even though it is often said that one is not born Sámi but is raised as one. Thus, Sáminess is something which is either received through birth or not: Sámi ethnicity is situated in one’s body. The following section discusses this deeper sense of being a Sámi, the significance of recognition, consciousness and the embodied experience of Sámi ethnicity.

The inherited, experienced, visible body

In the interviews I conducted for my doctoral dissertation, family background was always the first issue that came up when discussing the interviewees’ own Sáminess. The general opinion expressed in the interviews was that having a Sámi mother and/or father makes a person Sámi, classifies her/him as a member of a Sámi group, as one interviewee stated: ‘My mother is a Sámi and my father is from the Kyrö family [i.e., a Finn]’ (Interview 2). A visible ethnic identity is not necessary in order to be recognized as a Sámi. One’s origin is enough. Even if a person has not been in contact with Sámi culture at all, it is possible to regard her or him as a Sámi by her or his origin, as one interviewee stated:

Interviewer:

Do you regard such a person as Sámi if she or he is of Sámi origin but has not lived a Sámi life?

Interviewee:

Well, I regard such a person as a Sámi.

Interviewer:

So you recognize her/him as Sámi?

Interviewee:

Yes, I do. (Interview 6)

Thus, one cannot become a Sámi without the right origin – or it is, at least, regarded as very difficult to do so. When asked if it is possible to become Sámi, one interviewee said: ‘In my opinion only by descent’ (Interview 7). Neither, according to another interviewee, can a Sámi escape the Sámi ethnicity she/he has received through descent: ‘Of course, you can renounce your Sáminess if you deny it, even though the Sáminess itself will not disappear. If you want to be a Finn, you can pretend and act it out’ (Interview 3).

Amft (2007), who has interviewed Sámi people in Sweden, has also noted that the most important criterion for being a Sámi is belonging to a Sámi family. Amft (2007: 75) states that an outsider can, at most, become Sámi-like, but never a real Sámi. Ethnicization can only happen through one’s origins. Hence, family origin and descent produce bodily particularity: an ethnic body in the sense that ethnicity is regarded as a biologically inherited quality. Another question, however, is whether a native Sámi is a Sámi because of her or his ethnic identity; ethnic identity is nevertheless impossible without an ethnic body, or at least it is not considered an authentic identity.

The adoption of Sámi cultural practices by people who are not native Sámi, particularly if this has not been happening since childhood, is easily experienced as a threat to the ethnicity of the native Sámi. The history and experiences of colonization and assimilation explain the cautious attitude of the Sámi, who have had little opportunity to cherish their language and culture. In recent decades, the development of assimilation has partly ceased, thanks to the political organization and activism of the Sámi (Valkonen, 2009). The fear of final assimilation of the Sámi to the majority populations has nevertheless created an urgent need to protect the Sámi languages and culture as well as the Sámi population, the native Sámi and their ethnic particularity.

An interesting way to make the dynamics of the external threat visible is to read Bhabha’s (1994) concept of mimicry the ‘wrong way’ or turn the colonial composition upside down. Through the concept of mimicry, Bhabha shows how controversial and fragmented ostensibly coherent and consistent identities and ideologies actually are. He clarifies within the colonial context the process by which the colonized subject who imitates the colonizer has, as a result, become a little bit too similar to the imitated colonizer. In consequence, the apparently stable and authentic identity of the colonizer fractures (Bhabha, 1994).

In addition to the experience of cultural exploitation, the Sámi tendencies and performances of non-native Sámi can be threatening exactly because of this: they suggest that Sámi ethnicity is basically a learnable cultural identity and way of life: anybody can be ‘almost Sámi’. By the same token, the conception of Sáminess as being the natural identity of certain people is shaken and called into question. There is no fixed and constant source of Sámi ethnicity, which, simultaneously, is precisely the reason why it is important to draw the ethnic line according to descent, ‘Sámi blood’. Roots and blood cannot be copied. Basically, only a non-native child adopted into a Sámi family can (through acceptance) become socialized as Sámi and thus become a member of the Sámi ethnic group. An adoptive child is also regarded as a Sámi according to the Sámi definition of the Sámi Act (Finnish Government Bill, 248/1994). Another question, however, is whether an adoptive child socialized as a Sámi can become an ethnic Sámi especially if she or he carries the signs of another ethnicity in her/his body. This is a question which reveals the non-cultural side of ethnicity, namely, the significance of bodily and biological elements.

A Sámi body is also concrete and subjectively experienced. As a performative of ethnicity, it bears a biological dimension which can be interpreted from my research material. One can, for instance, recognize within oneself Sámi characteristics received as bloodline: ‘In my opinion it is also heredity, it sure is. I believe that certain features and so on are inherited, so I truly believe that it is also a question of heredity’ (Interview 7). The interviewees often connected Sáminess with their own physical appearance. Certain bodily features were considered as embodied Sámi heredity. It is interesting to note that these ‘Sámi elements’ of a body do not necessarily differ significantly from the historical Sámi descriptions which racialized and stereotyped mental and physical ‘Sámi characteristics’. When asked whether Sámi ethnicity is a question of embodiment, one of my informants answered,

Well I could imagine that [Sáminess is] embodied in the sense that one adapts easily to Northern natural circumstances, for instance, to coldness. When one does not have that much body surface, one survives better in cold conditions. I think, at least in that way, it is a question of the body if you think of the old way of life. (Interview 5)

When asked if one’s Sáminess can be seen outwardly, another interviewee answered: ‘Probably not outwardly, except that I am very short and that, of course, on feast days I wear the Sámi dress’ (Interview 7). On the one hand, the racialized and essentialistic Sámi pictures have been so deeply internalized by the Sámi that they are still an important part of the Sámi self-conception. On the other hand, an essentialistic self-image can be part of a commonplace strategic essentialism in which an essentialistic self-image is an everyday emancipative strategy and new form of self-dignity. One may be proudly ethnically different also in a corporal sense (cf. Spivak, 1993).

The Sámi also recognize other Sámi by outward appearance. Recognition can be based on certain clothes or jewellery signalizing a person’s Sáminess or merely on a person’s physical appearance. For example, one informant, explaining how she guessed my identity when she saw me for the first time, said,

Well, I recognize a Sámi by facial features or presence. Or maybe someone doesn’t look like a Sámi at all, but I see something … Like your shoes. I knew immediately that was [you]. And you were small, and your cheekbones … (Interview 1)

An important difference from the hierarchic classifications of the historical race discourses is the fact that a ‘Sámi appearance’ is often experienced as a positive and deeply meaningful issue. Fitting the ‘stereotyped’ Sámi appearance can actually be subjectifying and emancipating: it is easier to be a Sámi when you look like a Sámi. You do not have to explain your Sámi ethnicity if it is clear at first glance.

The cultural body

In addition to origin and physical qualities, Sámi ethnicity is also a cultural particularity, a cultural identity. Being born Sámi does not guarantee that one will automatically socialize as a Sámi: in present-day Finland, socializing as a Sámi is actually quite challenging, at least outside the Sámi region. The predominant cultural conventions concerning the Sámi can be located by asking what Sámi ethnicity ‘most authentically’ is and what ‘real Sáminess’ is. The answers reveal how these conventions regulate and determine Sámi ethnicity. The question of authenticity has a special significance in the indigenous context. Indigenous peoples are seen holding an authentic culture and way of life (e.g. Mathisen, 2004). The political Sámi identity draws strongly from the global indigenous discourse, and its influence on the identity and subjectivity of the Sámi individuals – made fragile by colonial practices – is indisputable.

In my research material, there are two different conceptions of the most authentic Sáminess. Some respondents equate authenticity with ease of being: ‘[I]t is a natural and easy part of oneself and one’s identity’ (Writing 6). Others define Sáminess according to the traditional criteria, whether they themselves meet them or not (see also Amft, 2007). One Sámi who lives in a city defines the most authentic Sáminess as her grandparents’ living close to nature, a life which includes the use of the Sámi language in everyday life, reindeer herding and Sámi handicrafts. She ponders her own options to live a Sámi life:

Well, I don’t really see that it can very easily be lived here in the city. Of course, what is a Sámi life, but if it is that you should wear the Sámi clothes every day and make those handicrafts, then it will surely be successful, but somehow those clothes are not very practical in modern life. (Interview 7)

Sámi ethnicity is strongly connected to the established elements that are perceived as traditional: Sáminess consists of mastering and performing cultural elements. One does not need to wonder about one’s Sámi ethnicity if one has grown up with the Sámi language and culture, especially if one lives in a Sámi community. This helps one achieve subjectivity: becoming a Sámi – cultural survival as a Sámi – happens by being born and growing up as a Sámi. Subjectivity appears as ease and being comfortable with Sámi ethnicity and identity: one’s Sáminess is natural and easy; one can genuinely be what one is.

As the contemporary Sámi have widely dispersed and growing up as a Sámi has not been and still is not always very easy, the responsibility for maintaining Sámi ethnicity in a cultural sense often remains in the hands of the individual. Learning and performing Sáminess is important for one’s own Sámi identity and subjectivity: it is easier to be a Sámi when one masters Sámi skills and practices. In addition to self-identification, the sense of ease comes from surviving in the Sámi community and meeting the expectations of others, both Sámi and Finns. This can nevertheless be preceded by various feelings of constraint, obligation and shame. One Sámi who has had enough of being considered as culturally weaker, coming from the wrong region and not speaking the Sámi language, decided finally: ‘Damn it, I will learn that language’ (Writing 6). When asked how she feels about her Sáminess now, the answer was, ‘It feels good, thanks for asking. Nowadays it is pretty trouble-free for me. Natural and easy. My life. Already thought over. But it has been very painful indeed over the years’ (Writing 6).

Another Sámi for whom many Sámi cultural expressions have seemed strange writes about the difficulty of constructing a Sámi identity:

My Sáminess has never been an easy thing for me. In different phases of my life I have thought over my identity and particularly my Sámi ethnicity many times. Never have I been able to say straight out to unknown people that I am Sámi. (Writing 5)

The writer connects her conflicting feelings and experiences related to her Sáminess and her difficulties in constructing a Sámi identity to Sámi skills and conventions: since she does not speak the Sámi language or have any reindeer, constructing a Sámi identity has been difficult for her. One may also begin to doubt one’s right to be a Sámi due to a lack of linguistic and cultural skills. When asked if she felt like a full member of the Sámi community, one interviewee answered,

I don’t feel like a full member because I am physically so far from there [the Sámi home region] and precisely [not knowing] the language, and probably that I don’t master the handicraft culture except weaving laces, so somehow I don’t feel as entitled as the more active people. (Interview 7)

The Sámi language seems to be a particular condition of experiencing Sáminess and of an individual’s cultural survival. Generally, the first question asked of a Sámi is ‘Do you speak Sámi?’ In various everyday life situations, especially when meeting other Sámi, a person who does not speak Sámi remains and easily feels like an outsider. Furthermore, expressing one’s Sáminess may be more difficult than for those who speak fluent Sámi. Other Sámi may demonstrate quite clearly that a Sámi who does not speak the Sámi language belongs to the margins (Stoor, 1999: 73–74). The Sámi language has a particular significance as regards embodied subjectivity. A Sámi subject is born to a language through her/his immediate origin: in other words, is defined as a Sámi by her/his own, or her/his parents’ or grandparents’, first language (see the Sámi definition of the Sámi Act). A Sámi subject is born to a language, which is understood as a cultural order determining the criteria and conditions of subjectivity, and attains agency especially by mastering that language.

‘Half-Blood’, half subjectivity?

As a consequence of basing the ethnic distinction on origin, it is possible to define a person as ‘half Sámi’. The Sámi interviewed for my research defined themselves as Sámi by birth, and if the Sáminess was inherited from only one parent, the self-determination was generally ‘half Sámi’. This is a common category due to interethnic marriages and the widespread diaspora of the Sámi. The Sámi have been mixed with other populations over time, and probably a large proportion of modern-day Sámi are of mixed origins (Sámi-Finnish, Sámi-Norwegian, etc.). Many Sámi are also of mixed origin in a sense that they belong to two or more Sámi minority groups; a person can, for instance, be a half Skolt and half Inari Sámi. This kind of hybrid identities are significant for their bearers and also have an influence on how such a person positions oneself in ‘mainstream Sámi society’. Such hybrid identities are not, however, similarly a reason for questioning individual’s identity as in the case of minority/majority identities.

Being half Sámi is often considered as a fact on which, for instance, a strong cultural identity does not have significant influence: ethnically, a half Sámi is only half Sámi. The fact that there is a category of half Sámi shows, for its part, how deeply Sámi ethnicity is considered to be located in the body and to be received by birth. The ethnic boundary may pass through an individual. In this respect, Sámi ethnicity is practically racialized and is made a biological question: Sáminess becomes a biological category which produces a bodily particularity.

Olofsson (2004), who has studied Sámi of mixed origin, argues that talking about a ‘half Sámi’ implies that such a person, unlike a ‘full Sámi’, does not have a pure and full identity (p.13). Ethnic identity is thus not so much a personal choice, but depends on the tolerance of the community towards persons of mixed origin (Olofsson, 2004: 25). Sámi of mixed origin have experienced otherness and marginality (Kramvig, 2005; Stoor, 1999). As Kramvig (2005: 59) has noted, both in academic and political debates, the emphasis of difference has developed into a situation where ethnicity has become a question of purity: in Norway you are either Norwegian or Sámi; you cannot be both. The fjord Sámi of mixed heritage studied by Kramvig often used the concept of ‘bastard’ – which, in Norwegian, means ‘cross-breed’ or ‘mongrel’ – as a category of self-identification. This reflects a sense of homelessness as regards the exclusive categories of Norwegian and Sámi as they have been produced in the public discourse on ethnicity (Kramvig, 2005: 59).

A person who has one parent from the majority population and the other from a minority group can have a dilemma of ethnic belonging resulting from the asymmetry of power between the dominant majority and subjected minority groups. Such a person belongs, in a way, to both the group of historical conquerors and the group of the oppressed (Olofsson, 2004: 25). Thus, a half Sámi cannot achieve ‘authentic Sámi experience and existence’ since she or he is always also part of the majority population through her/his birth. As Stoor (1999: 69) has noted, half Sámi as well as Sámi whose mother tongue is Finnish, often have experiences of otherness and marginality. Her own painful experience is that a ‘multi-identity’ can be stigmatizing: ‘I feel like a mongrel’ (p.69).

In principle, people who have a multi-ethnic background can identify with one of the groups or choose ‘a multi-identity’. Such people do not fall, for legal or cultural reasons, into the middle ground between the ethnic categories (Pääkkönen, 2008: 294–295). At the personal level, decisions concerning self-identification are nevertheless not easy or automatic. What kind of possibilities can a both/and position give, and what does such a position require? Is there room for hybrid identities within the Sámi discourse, which seems to prioritize purity and complete identities? Amoc,⁵ a Sámi rap artist with a multi-ethnic background, exemplifies the kind of thinking that bridges exclusive categories. In a newspaper interview, he states, ‘One could say about me that I am a half Sámi. Nevertheless, I feel that I am a complete Sámi. And a complete Finn too’ (Aamulehti, 2007). My doctoral research includes the following statement from a Sámi who is Finnish on his mother’s side, thinking about his Sáminess and Finnishness: ‘I just say that I am both, but the percentages vary’ (Interview 6).

Amoc is known for his ability to rhyme and rap in Inari Sámi, and the Sámi I interviewed is a part-time reindeer herder who is fluent in the Sámi language. It seems that in order to be a complete Sámi and a complete Finn, one must be socialized into both cultures and master elements of Sámi culture, such as Sámi language. The both/and position is not a real option unless a person has achieved subjectivity within both cultures and communities. In other words, the idea of the situationality of identity – a person performs Sáminess in one situation and Finnishness in another – does not cancel the demand for Sámi skills. Performing Sámi ethnicity in different situations and achieving subjectivity in these situations requires, in addition to being at least ‘half-blood’, Sámi skills, repeating the ‘Sámi procedure’. Although a person does not live a full Sámi life merely by performing the Sámi cultural elements, knowing and mastering them is indispensable in certain situations in order to survive as a Sámi.

Conclusion

A radical Sámi organization of the 1970s and 1980s called ČSV⁶ used the slogan ‘show your Sámi spirit!’ in order to create an alternative Sámi image and replace the earlier common habit of hiding Sámi ethnicity. Today, openly displaying one’s Sámi ethnicity has become mainstream, especially among the younger Sámi generation. At the same time, the earlier stigma and shame connected with Sáminess are being wiped away. Sámi ethnicity is a great source of pride which I, being a Sámi myself, am also honoured to experience.

In this article, I have analysed the construction of an ethnic category – Sáminess – from a bodily perspective and the relation and dynamics between corporality and cultural identity. The ethnic boundary of a Sámi is an embodied question: a person is a Sámi by birth. People who are born Sámi are Sámi by the expected particularity of their body, which can appear as an outward appearance and/or as mental characteristics. It can also remain as ‘Sámi DNA’. In this sense, a person can truly be a Sámi without knowing it, even though, for instance, the Sámi definition in the Sámi Act provides that a person must identify herself or himself as Sámi.

Being a cultural Sámi is possible, natural, permitted and desirable for a person who is born Sámi. One’s origin is thus a performative which both enables and naturalizes the individual’s Sámi ethnicity. It produces a Sámi body by naturalizing certain bodily qualities as well as a certain cultural identity. Therefore, outward appearance, language, cultural skills and mental characteristics are embodied performatives of ethnicity which both racialize Sáminess by connecting these elements strictly to a biological body and are used to define Sáminess as an ethnic category and the Sámi as an ethnic group. What must still be borne in mind is that there is no racial essence behind the ethnicizing and racializing acts. As Byrne (2011) has said, reformulating Butler’s definition of gender, ‘race is performatively constituted by the very expressions which are said to be its results’ (pp.5–6).

Nevertheless, a Sámi body does not guarantee Sámi identity or Sámi subjectivity. Sáminess is determined by origin, but living and acting as a Sámi and Sámi identity are understood above all as cultural Sáminess, which means mastering and performing certain elements that are perceived as Sámi. Sámi ethnicity is defined and people are categorized as Sámi based on culture as well. In order to become a Sámi subject – in other words, to become a socially accepted and capable Sámi actor – a native Sámi must perform, at least to a certain extent, the established Sámi elements. This process filled with power can be described as performativity, in which a person’s Sámi identity is produced performatively in those acts which are considered to result from Sámi identity followed by Sámi origin. This can be the unconscious performing of Sámi ethnicity as one’s natural way of life or a more conscious construction of identity.

Consequently, a native Sámi may also live against her or his ‘true essence’ or in a way which is culturally wrong, in which case her or his Sáminess may be called into question. Butler (1993: 139) has pointed out that gender is a project the end point of which is cultural survival. Ethnic origin cannot be considered equally compelling as sex, on which Butler’s theory of power originally focused. Biological sex is always unavoidably a question of power: an individual with a certain anatomy is both humanized by her/his anatomy and automatically connected to a certain symbolic order which barely gives any options to negotiate. Sámi origin is also a mechanism of power in the sense that it connects an individual with a certain symbolic order – the Sámi discourse – which influences the way a person is perceived and ultimately who she or he is.

The Sámi are part of the racialized landscape concerning ethnic minorities in a sense that their difference from the majority is historically deeply rooted to bodily particularity (e.g. Isaksson, 2001). In the current political situation of desirability of indigenousness, however, self-motivated racialized identity which is based on defining ethnicity through embodied elements is emancipating and subjectivating the Sámi. In this respect, a strategic racialization of Sáminess within a context of particular political status of an indigenous people and in the midst of a constant struggle over the indigenous rights and recognition belongs to a different discourse than the racializing discourse concerning, for instance, immigrants in Finland, Nordic countries and Europe. However, not even the Sámi can avoid being an object of racist discourse and acts both in local and national levels: the cultural and ethnic particularity of the Sámi related to their indigenous status is constantly questioned by perceiving indigenousness as a regional, livelihood-related and historical question instead of a lived and embodied cultural difference.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

Biographical note

Sanna Valkonen holds a PhD in political sciences from the University of Lapland, Finland, where she works as a postdoctoral researcher. Her PhD thesis (2009) was published by Vastapaino under the title Poliittinen saamelaisuus (Political Sáminess). Valkonen is interested in theories of performativity and intersectionality, postcolonial criticism, gender and religion and political dimensions of ethnic relations. She is most specialized in Sámi research. Her ongoing research deals with the embodied experiences of Sámi women in the revivalist religious movement, Laestadianism.

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