LANDSCAPE AS MONUMENT: SÁMILAND AND ITS CONTESTED PATRIMONY
LANDSCAPE AS MONUMENT: SÁMILAND AND ITS CONTESTED PATRIMONY

Summary/Abstract: Monuments are typically seen as physical objects created by humans as focal points for unity based on common beliefs, for remembering significant events or individuals and/or as reminders of past glories. For some indigenous groups, including the Sámi, the landscape, or at least some parts of it, has the same or similar associations. For the dominant political forces in the nations that have taken over Sámi lands, however, including those Sámi who have changed and adapted their lives in favour of modern capitalist society, the landscape is less a monument and more an exploitable resource. This dilemma, between the Sámi that retain traditional values and perspectives and a mainstream more concerned with economics and ecology within a modern Eurocentric frame, may be resolvable through compromise, through a mutual recognition of the landscape as a monument on the one hand and modern realities on the other.

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