Johan Kihlert: "Chasing away the colonial ghost: Sámi anti-colonial thought as a part of a global post-colonial intellectual tradition in the 1970s and 1980s"

In the 1970s, an increasingly large amount of Sámi anti-colonial critiques entered the public spheres of the Nordic states. Whilst Sámi anti-colonial writings can be traced to at least the dawn of the 20th century this period saw a surge in such publications. Influenced by local and global events such as the protests of 1968 and the growing movement of indigenous internationalism, these works placed Sámi issues in a global context. This presentation will explore these anti-colonial works as part of a global indigenous anti-colonial intellectual tradition.

The works that are studied range from political manifestos and anthologies to newspaper op-eds and programmatic documents issued by Sámi organisations. With these writings as the primary source material, and similar critiques from other indigenous contexts as a point of comparison, the central questions of this study are: How is colonialism understood? What are believed to be its causes and remedies? How can these indigenous understandings of colonialism be related to the wider field of post-colonial studies at the same period?