Umeå Part Tre (3)

Sunday 1/18/15

Free day! I slept in and it was glorious! One of my roommates slept until 12:30pm and when she gets up she say, "I should probably get up before the sun goes down" because the sun sets at like 3pm.

We ate lunch at McDonalds. I love visiting McDonalds in every foreign country because they always have different menu items. I ordered something called Cheese tops. They were basically jalapeño poppers and not bad!

We went on a long walk around the inlet and among the tall pine trees. For dinner we ate tacos as a group in the hostel.

Monday 1/19/15

Today, we actually had classish stuff. We traveled by bus to the university and toured the Sami department and Arctic Research Center. Two scholars presented lectures on their research and work. 

First, Lena Nilsson discussed her work on diet and health in relation to different groups of people such as indigenous populations verses modern city inhabitants. Her lecture was very interdisciplinary combining science, anthropology, religion, history and politics. Her research began when she became inflicted with an eye disease. She discovered it was due to a type of gene she had which turns out was most common among Northern populations. The only thing that could treat the disease was a certain diet such as less meat and milk, and more fish. Turns out the diet suggestions correspond to the traditional diet of the Sami and other northern people. Modern doctors told Lena they really couldn't help her with her eye disease. Therefore a combination of science and cultural norms can aid in treating diseases and who knows what else! 

Lena discovered an interesting Sami cultural explanation for the origin of the eye disease in the community. At some point in the past a woman was fighting with her husband because he was still worshipping false gods. She was a converted Christian and he still believed in the holy stones, seljten. Angry he kicked the top rock of his seljten into the lake and then on cursed his people with the eye disease. 

Second, Historian Anna-Lill Ledman gave a general introduction to Sápmi, where the Sami live, and Sami history. Her main focus is on increasing the knowledge of the Sami in the general Swedish population. Most Swedes know close to nothing about the indigenous people of the north. The little they do know are often stereotypes. Policies toward the Sami historically have been very colonial. Their culture and selves have been thought of as inferior and therefore exploitation and stealing of land was justified. Sami weren't even entrusted with their own education because they were seen as too dumb to manage it. One must keep in mind that the Sami had been thriving in Sápmi thousands of years before colonists came in the Middle Ages. The sad reality is that types of colonialism or cultural domination still persist. Dams and mining damages the environment the Sami live in and disrupts traditional practices such as reindeer herding. The Alta conflict is a historical even that took place in the 1980s when Sami united with Environmentalists against a hydroelectric dam that was being built on the Alta River in Norway. Similarly, now there are protests against the Kallack mine in Northern Sweden. Historians in Sweden all agree that the Sami have been and are being cheated but the issue is convincing politicians. 

Anna-Lill described us as ambassadors of Sami culture-to spread the word about these people and their story. I loved talking to her about the state of history in Sweden. There are many similarities to the US. She described that depending on what party is in power, how much the schools value history differs. No Sami history is taught, often because it portrays a negative view of the Swedish state. America in general values history so little, it is disheartening. The little history that is taught is very pro-America and rarely questions the past. To clarify, there is nothing wrong with being patriotic but often views of the little people get left out and it is important to be critical of ourselves in order to improve.

The policies, old and

new, about how the US deals with Native Americans and how Sweden deals with Sami are very similar. Both countries have a history of cultural domination and physical exploitation. Specifically, both sent the indigenous peoples to boarding schools in which they weren’t allowed to speak their own language or practice their cultural traditions. The US is better at incorporating some knowledge of Native Americans into history curriculums and reparations are being made, more so than in Sweden.

End of historical academic digression!

For dinner Monday night we ate yummy Italian pizza and most of our group watched frozen. Next time you watch it, pay attention to Kristof! He is of Sami heritage!

Sidney and Pat eating our family size pizza!