Three centuries on, a shaman's precious rune drum returns home

Instrument confiscated by the Danes is given back to the Sámi people after a lengthy campaign



The sacred Sámi shaman drum returned by the Danish authorities to the Karasjok Museum in the far north of Norway. Photograph: Helge Mikalsen/VG

Charlotte Higgins in Karasjok
Sun 13 Mar 2022 03.30 EDT

On 7 December 1691, a precious rune drum, created to help a noaidi, or shaman, to enter a trance and walk among spirits, was confiscated by the authorities. The owner, Anders Poulsson – or Poala-Ánde in the name’s Sámi form – was tried for witchcraft the following year.

Poulsson told the court, according to official records, that his mother had taught him how to use the rune drum, because “he wanted to help people in distress, and with his art he wanted to do good, and his mother said that she would teach him such an art”.
Before a verdict was reached, he was murdered, with an axe, by a man who had “taken leave of his senses”.

Poulsson’s drum entered the Danish royal collection, and later became the property of the National Museum of Denmark – until now. The drum has officially been handed back to the Sámi people, after what Jelena Porsanger, director of the Sámi Museum in Karasjok, northern Norway, called “a 40-year struggle”.

An indigenous people of northern Europe, the Sámi inhabit Sapmi, a territory straddling northern Norway, Finland, Sweden and Russia’s Kola peninsula. “It’s a precious object for us that is a symbol of our history, values and culture – and at the same time a symbol of colonisation and unequal power relations,” said Porsanger.

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A Sámi indigenous family group outside their home in the north of Norway around 1880.
Photograph: Pump Park Vintage Photography/Alamy

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/mar/13/three-centuries-on-a-shamans-precious-rune-drum-returns-home

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Finland to examine injustices suffered by Sámi people
By Pekka Vanttinen | EURACTIV.com Nov 2, 2021

Part of the commission’s task is to find out how injustices affect the Sámi people and their communities today, to promote links between the Sámi and the state of Finland, and to raise awareness about the Sámi as indigenous people whose status is guaranteed by the Constitution.

The process began in 2017 when the former government signed an agreement with the Sámi Parliament to fund the commission with €200,000. The body consisting of five members should deliver its report by 30 November 2023.

. . .

Tuomas Aslak Juuso, President of the Sámi Parliament said, “There are still barriers to the recognition and implementation of the rights of the Sámi as an indigenous people in Finland. I hope that this difficult process will result in concrete measures that genuinely advance the status of the Sámi in Finnish society.”

Similar truth commissions for indigenous people have been launched in around 40 countries. The Norwegian Sámi commission is currently working, and Sweden is about to establish its own. Unlike Norway and Denmark, Finland and Sweden have not ratified ‘The Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention’ from 1989. There are around 10,000 Sámi people living in Finland.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/finland-to-examine-injustices-suffered-by-sami-people/