Månadens gästbloggare

Neeta Jääskö är bosatt i Inari i Finland. Smyckeskonstnär som spränger gränserna mellan det traditionella och nytänkande inom samisk design. Följ hennes liv och tankar på bloggen under juli månad. _______________________________________________________________________________

Neeta: tweet your revolution

<blockquote>"att ha på sig kolt/kofte - betyder det att man MÅSTE va beredd att informera? ka syns @gaski @susanneamalie & ni andra #lappish ?"  
(http://twitter.com/#!/ylvapavval/status/87277042990718976)</blockquote>

This tweet inspired both a conversation on Twitter and a lot of thoughts. I get into this conversation from time to time, and it's amazing that over the years almost everyone has also testified to feeling like whenever they wear the traditional dress, they get singled out to explain and inform what is it that they're wearing, and why. In settings with almost exclusively Saami presence and where there is a clear context, for instance the Saami films being featured in some film festival, it doesn't happen so frequently, but otherwise it often feels like wearing one's traditional garb gives one the duty of representing and educating the public at large.

Unfortunately, a majority of people living in Finland, Sweden, Norway or Russia are happily ignorant about the colonial baggage that we still carry. (I would venture a guess that a lot of Saami people are ignorant of this as well.) And the question "what's that dress and why do you wear it" is at first glance pretty benign, and when questioned, no one who asks that ever really means to offend or irritate. They're just curious, which is perfectly okay by itself. Their ignorance of the colonial baggage makes it impossible for them to realize HOW exactly is it wrong to demand to be informed. BUT. One would think that after centuries of overprivileged honky dudes travelling to Sápmi for research, writing endless titles on the Saami people, measuring our skulls, passing down our skeletons in pseudo-scientific circle jerks and having their grandchildren write up ludicrous "apologies" almost a full century after the fact, at least some of that accumulated knowledge would have penetrated the general consensus on things worth knowing about our country. But no. That knowledge is usually only dragged out in public discourse by oppressors when someone needs to "prove" that the Saami people of today are not "real" Saami, a tactic which is especially used on modern-day reindeer herders and in cases of land disputes.

To cut to the chase, I hereby posit that <em>the very act of demanding any member of a minority or an otherwise disenfranchised group to explain their perceived deviation from the norm and/or holding them accountable for, you know, BEING DIFFERENT, is a form of oppression</em>. In this case, a pretty spirit-dampening and insidious background-noise variety of oppression and passive aggression directed towards the Saami people.

More precisely, the endless, repetitive questioning is a tactic designed to defuse and derail discussions where actual issues pertaining to the oppressed group involved might conceiveably be tackled, which would be subversive and therefore perceived dangerous to the status quo. It helps to set key issues like the basic right to be able to use one's native language into a "special interests" category where they are subsequently easy to exoticize and trivialize. And while a lot of Saami people do benefit from exoticization, the net effect on the Saami peoples is generally negative.

Personally I'm getting to the point where I cannot be bothered to care any more that the public school systems are doing next to nothing to educate their own damn public about indigenous peoples and the issues involved in their own countries. That cannot be the job of any individual Saami person that happens to be present, either. The dress does NOT mean "ask me about your home country", and we DO have better things to do with our time and energy than to coddle the collective ignorance of the public. In this day and age, not learning it at school is about the stupidest excuse for continuing to be ignorant that I've heard, and believe me, I've heard some priceless excuses for acting stupid in my time. The language I use around this issue is harsh, and it may be easier for many to let micro-level oppression like this slide, but why put up with it if the net effect on both the individual and the collective are negative? It's time that grown-ups started doing their own research in their own time and taking their responsibilities as voters and citizens seriously, and give us some space to work on issues that actually matter to <em>us</em>. Pleading ignorance as a get-out-of-jail-for-free card works only once when a Google search of two or three words takes about five seconds to make, and siphoning the results takes about 15. Is that really such a stretch?

To balance the social commentary with a heartwarming artistic anecdote, I am busy working on the Fall/Winter '11 collections for men and women. I've been thinking black, geometric, with dashes of colour  and brightness, and the feedback I've received on some prototypes has been (funnily enough) along the lines of "these forms are too strict and controlled!" I like to surprise, and especially now that I work so extensively with organic forms and serendipitous design solutions, it's been good to work within right angles, constricted frames and a controlled process.

It's almost summer in Varangerbotn as well, and I'm preparing to spend some quality Friday evening time on the porch. Who knows, maybe a  revolution could begin!