Negotiating with the Public - Ethnographic Museums and Ethnopolitics

Abstract

Indigenous peoples, like the Sami of Fenno-Scandinavia, continue to be the object of museum display in ethnographic museums. Most of these exhibits focus predominantly on culture history via objects that reveal the quality and richness of indigenous cultures, with less emphasis on the political struggles that indigenous peoples are involved in. This paper is a reflection on the experiences in making a museum representation of a modern indigenous movement – the struggle of Sami in Norway for recognition and rights as an indigenous people. The project was meant not just to present a new way to represent indigenous peoples, but also to be designed as an argument in the ongoing ethnopolitical discourse on equity and difference in Sami-Norwegian relations.