Am I Sami? part 2 
by Elle Márja (Ellen Jensen)

    In 1994 I found out that I was Sami.  It was the yoik of Nils-Aslak Valkeapää at the Lillehammer Olympics opening ceremony that led to the words of my father, “They’re Sami, we’re Sami,” which led to where I am today and led to my recognition of who I have always been and will always be.  My self-identification as a Sami has taken many twists and turns since that day, since that fateful yoik and those four words that propelled me out of my chair and out of my obscurity to question what felt at the time as my preemptive oblivion from my not knowing.  I proceeded to chase my father around the house exclaiming “Why didn’t you tell me that these people existed, why didn’t you tell me before that we’re Sami?”  I hardly remember his response, but it had something to do with my being to overly dramatic and not to get too “New-Agey” about it.

    I went through an obsession period after that, determined to read anything I could get my hands on that had the word Sami attached to it.   I learned early on in this period that a policy of assimilation or “Norwegianization” was most certainly to blame for my Norwegian(ized) upbringing.  I had lived in Oslo for a year as a child and had heard many stories about the “North” and comments about how “They’re different in the North” to which I assigned little meaning.  I never had any clue about the reality that this “difference” so vaguely voiced was in fact a different people altogether.  (And yes, I knew there were Norwegians in the North too, and yes I knew there were Kven in the North too, and no I was not told there were Sami in the North too.)  There were moments during my obsession period where I was angry and felt a deep sense of loss and betrayal, wondering if my/our history and identity (if I may) could be fictionalized such that I had waved around the Norwegian flag in bunad (Nor: national costume of the region) with glee, then what else was I not told.

    The more questions I asked, the more confused I became, but through this confusion I still began to encounter a remarkable clarity.  I began to remember strange utterances from the people around me in my childhood, from family, friends, and teachers.  One former childhood friend had said to me once “look at your ‘chinky’ little eyes, Ellen, you look like a little Lapplander.”  I had no idea what a Lapplander was, but at the age of twelve such a comment leads one straight to the mirror to stare and ponder with angst about just what it was about my eyes that was so wrong.  An English teacher in high school once told me that my father was a “black Viking” when I protested that not all Norwegians have blue eyes and blond hair and, that on the contrary, my father had black hair and brown eyes and he was straight from Norway.  I often encountered the charge by my schoolmates that my father must really be a Jew or “like from Iran or something, because Norwegians don’t look like that.”  When flipping through family photo albums once another friend said to me “Your grandparents don’t look Norwegian, they look like Japanese or something – it’s their eyes.”  Not all actors look the part.

    My grandmother finally told my father the Sami part of our story perhaps in response to my prodding a few years before she died.  It certainly didn’t stand out from any other stories I have heard over the years from people who begin to embark on their journeys to discover just what it was in their families that kept those two words of those fateful four “we’re Sami” unvoiced for so long.  At this point, I had already been to the place of my father’s birth and upbringing in a coastal area of Finnmark twice, and had no question in my mind that Sami was a dominant part of our ethnic makeup, and although not often voiced, was, to my “outsider” eyes and ears, a dominant part of the local and familial culture I encountered.  Having lived in southern Norway and having been surrounded by the remnants of Norwegian culture still present in the cultural tapestry in the Midwest, it was clear to me during my visits that indeed “people in the North (of Norway) are different from the South.”

    When I first embarked on research on Sami Americans, I sought to uncover and find the ways in which Sami Americans act or materialize an identity despite feeling ambivalence about their heritage.  I attended the University of Minnesota for my undergraduate degree, took Norwegian for my language requirement and majored in Women’s Studies.  In both of these settings I often felt voiceless and alienated when trying to bridge into the discussion the reality of indigenous people and my own people into scholarly discussions about the benefits of social democracy in the Norwegian state, or in locating the center and periphery subjectivities in post-colonial feminist theories, for example.  It was a disjuncture that oftentimes felt insurmountable to address, and I oftentimes responded viscerally, my face would get warm and my head would seem to spin in trying to grapple with finding the language to make my claim.  One would think that the topic of Sami would fit well in such discourses, but then one would also think that people would be told if they were Sami in the first place.  Perhaps the issue was my own voicelessness, because I hadn’t rectified the fact that I am more than one thing.   In retrospect the ambivalence I sought to uncover and understand in my project was my own.  I will never be just Sami, or just American of mostly WASP descent – I will always be many things and they will all be reflected in how I act and move in the world. 

But I am Sami and my father is not a Jew or from Iran or a Black Viking and my grandparents were not from Japan, and our eyes are just fine, thank you very much. 

    I am not angry, nor do I feel betrayed anymore.  I don’t hate everything Norwegian, nor do I deny that great- grandparent who was from Trondheim, I simply wish to make the story more balanced, more reflective of the parts that have always been there but could not or were not to be voiced.  And to you in my family who may never read this – who sought to vehemently protect me from the truth because you didn’t want me to be burdened –  I say compassionately that I understand your burden but my burden was not knowing.  And I thank you for your courage when through tears you relieved me of my burden and told me the truth and, whatever name you give yourself and whatever flag you wave, you are not a fiction. 

    One of the participants for this research project referred to me as “his people.”  I have often reflected on who are “my people?”  My people might not even claim me as one of their own; my people may not like all the things I am saying here; my people might think I am shouting and that all that Sami stuff is in the past; my people might question my authenticity.  Or they might not.  Some people have yoiked for me, some people helped me wear gákti, and some people have smiled warmly in my direction when I feared nonacceptance having come from America, descended from people who called themselves Norwegian but who apparently looked Japanese.  Some people listened and they have taught.  While living in Tromsø one of my relatives made the trip from Alta to meet this daughter of her cousin who came (back) all this way to the North to study indigenous people.  She asked me (my translation) “why did you come all the way here to study indigenous people, don’t you have enough indigenous people to study in America?”  I said, “I’m kind of interested in learning more about the Sami, and they don’t have Sami studies in America.”  She said, “so you’ve come to learn about the fjellfinner (a pejorative term for the nomadic mountain Sami).  I responded “I kind out wanted to learn about us fjordfinner (a pejorative term for Fjord or Sea Sami) too.”  I had passed the test, the posturing was over and we could begin to get to know each other on neutralized terms. 

    Who are my people?  My people are all of the above.




 Ellen Marie Jensen (Elle Márja) recently completed her master’s thesis on Sami-America for an indigenous studies program at Tromsø University in Sápmi.  More about Elle Márja