Várdduo and UCGS invites Ina Knobblock

Várdduo and UCGS invites Ina Knobblock, lecturer in gender studies at Gaskeuniversiteete/Mid Sweden University.

‘A Rape of the Earth’: Sámi Feminists Against Mines

At this seminar I will present a paper that is a Sámi feminist analysis of large-scale resource extraction in Sábme, the transnational Sámi territory spanning northern Fenno-Scandinavia and the Murmansk peninsula. Specifically, it centres on the mining of Indigenous land within the borders of the Swedish nation-state to explore the knowledge evolving from Sámi feminists engaged in the anti-mining struggle.

Here, I argue that Indigenous epistemes – i.e., the foregrounding of relationality and interdependency between land, humans, nonhuman beings, and the natural environment – are foundational to the research participants’ struggles against mining in Sábme. From within a Sámi knowledge system, mining entails fracturing the relational web of connection. Consequently, mining represents a multi-generational threat against the survival of Sámi body lands and life-worlds.