Black Hand, White Snow
Niillas Somby and daughter Risten Somby, in a radio montage produced by Birger Amundson.
Originally broadcast on NRK, Norway, the program won the Prix Italia for documentaries in 1996

Niillas: I remember lying there in the snow, feeling great, even though my arm was blown off. It was like - this wasn't right, I should be dead.

Risten: It's quiet. Hu, e, dja, dje, dji, dju, djoo, ka, sja, sheh, si, so, su, da, deh, di, du, oo, us, ue, ui....listening to a Lakota language tape

He hasn't really wanted us to talk about it. When we ask him, he just shuts up. So it's a little hard to read all these books about it...I haven't finished any of them.

Risten is 18, really Risten Kare - in Norwegian, the pure Christian.
Under an open sky in Finnmark, a summer day in Sirbma, home place up in the Deatnu Valley, with the Deatnu River and Finland as closest neighbors.

Risten: A lot of bad things happened to us. I had dreams about police, nightmares where they kept chasing us and we had to keep running. And it wasn't just police, it was people calling up threatening us and tapping our phone. Someone said they were going to drive him over with their car - then I got a little scared.

The Alta-Guovdageainnu hydroelectric development unleashed the biggest conflict in modern Norwegian history. The struggle started in 1968 when plans were first presented - the damming of the Alta River would have a major impact on Sami reindeer husbandry. The Sami village of Máze would be completely submerged. The Sami felt their culture was threatened and mobilized resistance for the first time since the Guovdageainnu uprising in 1852. At that time Sami activists were beheaded.

Niillas: The first time I heard about the Alta case I was standing outside a store here in Sirbma, and a young person came up with a petition against Alta. I was attracted as a journalist and photographer. Finally I did shoot pictures, but just as documentation, not as a journalist. It was also my relatives who were part of the Guovdageainnu uprising.

Niillas, who used to be Nils A. Somby, is 46 years old, photographer, journalist, one-armed, one-eyed.

Niillas: Who owns the earth and who owns the land? Only a few generations ago, it was completely unthinkable to ask who owned the land. No one owns the earth, of course, because we are only a part of the earth. But today you can't think that way. Today you have to fight for your rights. But then we are a peaceful People for the most part.

Risten: Why did our family get so involved in the Alta case? Why is our family so......it could have been some other family.

Somby joined a Sami activist group and was part of a hunger strike in front of the Parliament building. Recorded fall, 1979

Niillas: The police can move us, but they will never get us to eat until the government meets our demands.

Reporter: Are you one of the seven hunger strikers?

Niillas: I am one of the seven hunger strikers.

Reporter: What is your name?

Niillas: My name is Nils Somby.

Reporter: What is your feeling right now?

Niillas: This is brutal. I never thought this could happen in Norway.

Reporter: Where were you when the police moved in?

Niillas: I was in the tent sleeping.

Risten: I remember Oslo, the hunger strikers were taken into the police cars, and then I cried and cried and cried, and my aunt said, "Just cry, then the cops will see they are being inhuman." I remember many women who cried, policewomen who cried and apologized for being there.

The kingdom was poisoned, bitter, the Alta case bred hatred. When the supreme court in 1982 finally handed down a ruling - development of the Alta River is legal - the final obstacle was removed. It was all systems go for Norwegian Hydroelectric bulldozers and steamshovels.

Niillas: Now looking back, it's easy to see it was an act of desperation. When it doesn't help to hunger strike, it doesn't help to argue, it doesn't help to chain yourselves together to stop trucks, OK, then let's talk a language that the authorities maybe will understand - their own language. It was just too bad that we didn't have enough respect for explosives.

It was a bone-cold winter night. Nils A. Somby, John Reiar Martinson and an unidentified third man wanted to demonstrate their detest for the Norwegian government, parliament and supreme court. A real bang to protest the final decision to develop the Guovdageainnu waterway. Three men by the construction bridge at Øvre Stilla, Saturday night, March 20, 1982.

Niillas: It was very cold. I had on a big new reindeer skin peaska (coat). We went under that bridge and put things down. We had set a charge with an alarm clock, battery-driven, with wires, and set it so that half an hour after we left it would go off. When I took out the clock, John Reiar Martinson says, "Now the damn clock's stopped." "No problem," I said, "I have a new battery." The second I took out the battery the charge went off and I saw a flash of light, just like a star, right in front of my eyes. Then I was thrown up in the air and thought "There goes that lifetime." I lay in the snow wondering, "Now what?" I must admit it felt pretty good lying there - I didn't have a care in the world. Then I thought "This must be what it's like to be dead." I heard John Reiar Martinson, very stressed out, yell, "Nils, are you alive?" I moved this hand and felt around, and felt my hand that wasn't...that's gone now, blown to bits. I felt with this hand that someone else was lying there because I felt this other hand. It was like feeling someone else's hand because I didn't have any feeling in that hand. Then they came and pulled me onto the snowmobile sled. I told them both to get out of there because I didn't have anything to do with them. We hadn't done anything except blow up my arm which was mostly my own business. One of then took my advice and left. John Reiar Martinson said he was staying - I guess his conscience got to him or something. I didn't feel any pain until I got to the Alta clinic. They shot me up with tranquilizers so I was more and more out of it. The next thing I remember is waking up with a lot of cops around me so I don't have much more to say. It's disappeared in a nice sort of way.

Rowing

Niillas: I'm not totally helpless when I'm rowing if it's not too windy. It's possible to row with one oar, even if you don't go very fast. These are some things that take getting used to, certain things that take a little more time. As long as I do the things I used to do, that's good enough.

Vestertana, the coast, like a grey blue shimmering in the north. In the east, Varanger peninsula, rounded grey-brown mountains. Streaks of snow, gnarled arctic birch, midsummer, Finnmark.

Niillas: For me, I've always been here in the summer. If I were inland now, in Sirbma, I wouldn't feel as much at home. I feel the wind, the smell of all the growing things - I'll tell you one thing about this place: it's great!

Niillas: Now they've pulled the net on the shore.

At the edge of a small lake, wife
 and Risten.

Niillas: Now you can tell they're not hard-core fishermen - a little wind and they come in. It's just starting to get a bit windy now. Let's see if they got any fish, these fishermen. Now these are fish.

Dagny: They're not very big.

Risten: Now there'll be supper for grandma.

Risten: Now I care a lot about Sami culture, but we do have a choice. It's not just the colonists who came here and forced everything on us. They haven't just come here to destroy everything and ruin our lives. There are reasons why he looks at things his way and we look at things our way.

Nils Somby ended up in Tromso county jail - no visitors, no mail, in solitary - after the doctor in Tromso amputated his left arm, just under the elbow. The hand was impounded by the police as evidence.

Niillas: You could say that there was already enough evidence that the hand wasn't there. They put it in formaldehyde in Tromso hospital with police tape around it saying it was state's evidence. Me being the activist I was then, I convinced them that the hand was mine and that I should get it. Finally they said, "OK, take your hand." It was hard for them to sound convincing about the fact that they would use it as evidence. Dagny, my wife, was on her way to jail when she heard from my lawyer that now, at least the hand was free. So she stopped by the hospital and picked it up. She casually mentioned it to the cab driver, that the hand was in her purse, and he threw her out of the cab.

The state prosecutor charged him and John Reiar Martinson with homicidal arson, Paragraph 148, where it provides penalties for arson when loss of life can easily result. Recommended sentence: 21 years

Niillas: It doesn't bother me one bit that I conned my way out of there - I really did have to put on an act to get out of jail. Actually what I did was stop eating. My plan was to say, "You're poisoning my food. I have had so much come down on me for so many years, that I think you're trying to get rid of me the easy way." I went for a week and only ate fruit, and then I thought, it's time to take some more action. So I took my bags of fruit and threw them out of the cell - apples and oranges were rolling down the hall. The guard came and said. "What in the hell are you doing here, Somby - you've thrown out all your fruit. What in the hell is that supposed to mean?" Then I had to act the role of my life. I had clogs on, and kicked an orange so hard that it squirted juice all over the ceiling. I said, "You know goddamn well what you're trying to do, and I'm not picking up these goddamn oranges either." Then he threw me back in the cell.

Risten: "The colonists have destroyed most of the Indigenous People in the world. The first thing they destroy is the religion, and then they start on the language and then finally they are assimilated, become a part of the dominant culture." That speech I've heard for so many years - it never changes - and that Indigenous People are closer to nature. I have Norwegian friends. They are just as close to nature as I am and I pollute just as much as they do. So...

Niillas: It was like this, it just so happened that there was a plumber under my cell who was working on something or other. The warden was visiting me, and was trying to talk some sense to me. "Now you damn well better settle down Somby, and we aren't murderers either." he said. So I said, "Listen, someone's banging on those pipes. What in the hell are they doing now? Now I have to stop drinking water too!" Finally release orders came from high places and I was able to leave prison.

A few weeks after Somby was released from custody - he fled the country. Left from Sirbma, via Finland to Canada, with a fake passport and dyed hair.

Niillas: Before this trip I went to a guy who was real powerful, one of our most powerful. You could almost call him a noaide, and he said, "Just leave - don't worry about it. I will close the eyes of anyone who gets in your way." And I went all the way to Yellow Knife in the Northwest Territories without any problem.

Again, Somby made front page news: "Alta saboteur smuggled abroad." The attorney general said, "I havn't heard anything like this since the roundup of Nazi collaborators after the war, where anyone has sought political asylum in another country."

Three months after fleeing, his family joined him in Canada - wife Dagny, daughters Anja, and Risten, who was then six years old. The family was adopted by Indians and they were constantly pursued by Canadian police.

Niillas: We were adopted by five Indian tribes, as members of those tribes. They had the right, in their own Nations, to take in people who sought immigrant status. First I was adopted in a traditional ceremony where there were drums, singing, and eagle feathers - a whole ceremony. And I was driven away from this ceremony in a car with armed guards, so if Canadian police followed us there would have been gunfire. There were four machine guns in the car I was riding in.

Risten: I remember that time in Canada. It was in Fort McCloud, we lived in a little barracks. There wasn't a lot to do there and we were inside alot. We always had our suitcases open in case we had to leave fast. One time I was digging around in the suitcases and I saw a scarf with something inside it, so I thought, this has got to be good. So I unpacked it and it was something black. I looked at it a long time and wondered what it was. Then I saw the nail, and I knew it was a finger.

Niillas: Suddenly one morning the police were at the door knocking. I didn't have any shoes on, was barefoot, but was lucky to have gotten up in time to have shirt and pants on. They just grabbed me, took me out to the car and put me in ankle irons - the same for my wife and daughters in another car. They were taken away to a family I heard later. They weren't allowed to play outside. I didn't hear a damn thing about them for several days, so I started to get worried.

Risten: I remember grandma standing on the steps in Sirbma on the top step, with her arms out wide waiting for us to come up. I was the first to go up, and I was still so small that I only went up one step at a time, the way little kids do. I remember I had some friends who were really shy and I was shy too, so we sat for two hours in the living room and didn't say a word, just looked at each other.

Two years and three months after fleeing, Nils Somby was back in Norway with his family. At the trial he was charged with damaging public property and illegal possession of explosives. Homicidal arson was not even mentioned. The sentence was one year's imprisonment, seven months suspended, five months already served. Niillas was a free man.

Niillas: I don't know if this made me paranoid, or how good my reality contact really is. My buddy John Reiar Martinson was killed after this. I won't say murdered, but killed in a mysterious way that was not investigated - not much effort put into it anyway, as I see it. He was driving a dogsled up on Jotka Lake which is a couple of kilometers from the, for us, fateful bridge. He was hit by a snowmobile and then some of his dogs were killed too. The argument is that he was drunk and that's why he lost control. I'll say this, I havn't always been an angel in my younger days, and I'll gladly admit to driving a snowmobile drunk, and it wasn't easy. So what really happened here was precision driving.

Listening to a language tape

Risten: Lu ma meh mi nah. What I think is so cool about this language is that so few people speak it, and it's in South Dakota in the USA, on the Sioux reservations. I'm thinking that's where I'll go when I'm done with high school.

Vowels are produced in the larynx but resonated by forcing the sound through the nose as with nasalized French vowels. An poh, An peh tuh. An kanh. Chunk sa.

Niillas: Damn. I refuse to believe that Indigenous Peoples' life's philosophy, or religion, if you will, is so much worse than the Christian colonial culture. That's what's messed things up so that today we are colonized and out values are constantly made fun of and trivialized. I'm no extremist, but I could see myself going up to the pulpit, shoving aside the priest and saying, "This guy is lying, it's not true." Those people sitting in the church are really dumb who believe this stuff, because they believe whatever the authorities say. I'm not going to go and listen to a sermon by a priest from another culture.

Early January in Sirbma. Gray light, Black, white. Light snowfall. Distant lights. Buildings spread out. Frosted birch trees outside the living room window. Niillas and Risten on the sofa speaking Sami. Risten lives at a boarding school in Guovdageainnu, high school. It's the weekend.

Risten: Why was our family so involved with Sami politics at that time?

Niillas: That's impossible to say.

Risten: It seems to me that you have a lot of bitterness in you. Was it bitterness that caused you to do something so drastic?

Niillas: No, I think it's impossible to explain why it was necessary to do that.

Risten: Was it heroism?

Niillas: I don't think it was that either, because it started out as street theatre talk only, but it evolved into something more.

Risten: But blowing things up, was that something you planned, or did you just do it the last minute?

Niillas: Everybody was thinking about blowing things up. There even was a play about it, and maybe the reason we did it was because people were so afraid that it might happen. The feeling was that so much wrong was being done to our culture, you could expect just about anything. And that's what we did - fulfilled their expectations.

Risten: Do you feel that you accomplished anything?

Niillas: On just a personal level, I feel I've accomplished a lot, even if I lost an arm.

Risten: And an eye.

Niillas: Yes but that's something that I don't think about that much, the eye - now when you remind me...and that's the way it is with the arm too. I don't notice that I don't have it because I can still function. But to others it probably looks pretty bad. But I don't know...I don't have much contact with those people. They don't dare say anything to my face. I suppose you hear more about it, when they hear you're my daughter.

Risten: Ummm, no. Before, I used to hear a lot - I heard a lot then.

Niillas: It's true that time helps a lot. Time passes and I feel kind of helpless in a certain situation, and I have to start explaining to myself again why it was necessary to go and do that. After all we live in a free country.

Risten: It seems that you've given up the fight in a way.

Niillas: Fight for what?

Risten: I don't know, maybe there was something in your younger days, some ideals that you fought for. The person that I see now is not the same as the one you say you are.

Niillas: You mean that I don't follow through on what I believe?

Risten: Yes

Niillas: But I don't think it would have been very natural for me to go and demonstrate all the time and say this society is so terrible.

Risten: No, but I don't think you should condemn those people who colonized our land. Why should you condemn them?

Niillas: It isn't people we condemn. I believe there is room for more than one truth. If they have their values, as long as they don't directly collide with my values, that's fine, then I can accept them. The Christian culture has its goal to "go out into the world and make all people my disciples." they say, and that means...

Risten: But it isn't just Christianity...

Niillas:...let's go and make everyone the same, conform.

Risten: But who does that today, then? In the old days it was the old missionaries.

Niillas: Today, it's like a highly-developed mafia - the whole state.

Risten: I'm going to see grandma.

Birger: It suddenly became very tense....

Niillas: Yeah, it's difficult to understand these young people, I'm beginning to suspect that she's involved with those born-agains, those religious groups. I don't think she's started liking Norwegian culture that much the one year she's lived in Guovdageainnu, but I know there are a lot of born-agains at that school.

Birger: She hasn't said anything about it, though.

Niillas: No, that would be the last thing Risten would tell me. That would be the same as saying that she was spiritually sick, almost. I can accept a lot, but not that. I would simply look at her as if she had become mentally unbalanced, which is what I believe.

Birger: There is one thing that I've been a little curious about. You said you have the hand.

Niillas: Yes, I have it.

Birger: Is it in alcohol or formaldehyde?

Niillas: It's dried.

Birger: It's dried?

Niillas: Yes...and it's black.

Birger: I can't see it?

Niillas: No

Risten: It's quiet. You can only see stars. I think it's so incredibly beautiful - almost like you can hear it. And it's pretty cold, when you feel it biting your cheeks. Oh, summer. The dwarf birch are all gnarled up, and over them I see the fishing lake.

It is thought provoking that Prime Minister Brundtland, Attorney General Riba Moen and other prominent spokespersons in the kingdom have come forth and apologized that the Alta River was ever developed.