From a detailed multi-perspectival drawing of reindeer to written accounts of belief systems and childbirth, Johan Turi’s work offers unparalleled insight into his life as a Sami person living in northern Sweden at the start of the ۲۰th century.
In the face of racist discrimination, land disputes and the spectre of encroaching industry, Turi wanted his ۱۹۱۰ book Muitalus sámiid birra (An Account of the Sami) to set the record straight about the lives of Europe’s only recognised Indigenous people.
Turi is widely regarded as the first Sami author to write about Sami life in his own language, but until now his pioneering works had not been on display for almost ۱۰۰ years.
To mark the handover to the Swedish government this week of a long-awaited report by the Truth Commission for the Sami People on abuses committed by the state against the Sami, his writings, drawings, paintings and Duodji (traditional Sami handicraft) now form the centre of an exhibition at the Kin Museum of Contemporary Art in Kiruna, the area in which he used to live.
The title of the exhibition, On the Ugly and the Beautiful, draws from a quote by Turi, who died in ۱۹۳۶, about his belief that everything, positive and negative, has a place to be shown.
His work is on display alongside two contemporary artists, Outi Pieski and Johanna Minde.
The museum’s director, Maria Lind, said An Account of the Sami, which was published in Sami and Danish before being translated into Swedish seven years later, is “about Sami life, small and big – external and inner life”.
Turi was born in Guovdageainnu (Kautokeino), the Norwegian part of Sápmi, in ۱۸۵۴ but as the imposition of formal national borders began to have a bigger impact on the lives of the Sami, his family, who were reindeer herders, moved to Kiruna.
“He had dreamed about writing a book about the Sami with the purpose of making the population in Sweden understand how difficult it was for the Sami because those were difficult years,” Lind said, citing the arrival of settlers, industry, including mining, and the railway.
“He wanted the king to read his book because he felt if the king knew then things would change. Most likely the king did not read his book, but it became a success,” she added.
The problems facing Sami people today are not dissimilar to those Turi would recognise. Industry – especially the search for rare earth minerals and wind energy – is an ever-increasing threat to reindeer herding and nature. Anti-Sami rhetoric is on the rise, including from political leaders, despite the seeming progress symbolised by the truth commission and its report, which will be presented on Wednesday. Similar commissions have also been held in Norway and Finland.
But unlike in Turi’s time, there is now the escalating impact of the climate crisis, particularly visible in the Arctic and northern regions.
As the report, which is intended to form the basis for reparation and reconciliation discussions, is handed over at Mid Sweden University in Staare, the Kin Museum will put on a special tour of the works, after which there will be a reading of testimonies at the culture house next door.
Pieski, who lives on the Finnish side of Sápmi, said she grew up with Turi’s writings and drawings, in which she sees the paper as the land itself. “And then humans, animals, everything is grounded on that paper,” she said.
“It’s not a western way of seeing a landscape as a beautiful view that you look at from a distance. But the actual place where you are, physically placed, and you are an active member of this network of land.”
Her research and exploration with Eeva-Kristiina Nylander around the subject of the ládjogahpir, a traditional hat historically worn by Sami women, is also part of the exhibition. Their work has helped to bring it back into use. It has, said Pieski, become a “new symbol for decolonial feminism”.
She said that in many ways Turi’s work started the current process of truth and reconciliation by writing about life and Sami culture from his point of view.
“It’s very sad that we are kind of in the same spot still now, ۱۰۰ years later,” she said. “And I know the same struggles are still existing that Johan Turi brought out with the fight for industrial land use and so on.
“No nation can exist without their own spoken or written histories. Ignoring it is a very simple colonial tool [that does] not give existence to one nation that we are here.”
