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Nils-Aslak
Valkeapää 1943-2001 Áilu, Áillohaš, passed away November 26th, 2001 I was born in Palojoensuu in Enontekiö commune, and was early subjected to the harsh realities of life, during the evacuation to the mountain regions on the Swedish side of the border. Mother is a Norwegian Sami, from Guovdageainnu (Kautokeino). Father's family are to be found far in the south of Sweden, near the Arctic Circle. I live in the narrow strip of Finland which stretches north-westwards like an arm—at least on the odd occasion when I get around to stopping in one place. When
I started school I learned that I had no mother tongue. Besides authoring a number of books and recordings, Áilu was a visual artist. He also appeared in the Oscar nominated 1987 film Pathfinder, where he composed some of the score, and in the miniseries Solens Sønn og Månens Datter. He also worked in theater and multi-media. Áilu was recipient of the Nordic Council's literature prize in 1991 for Beaivi Áchezan, translated into The Sun, My Father. For the CD Loddesinfonija he received the Prix Italia Pour La Radio in Rome, 1993. In 1994 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Oulu in Finland, and a year later he received a medal of honor from Estonia. Áilu may be best remembered internationally for the opening yoik of the Olympics in Lillehammer in 1994. He visited North America a number of times, more recently as guest artist at Gustavus Adolphus college in 1989 and as writer in residence at Augsburg College in 1994. Below are portions of a preface to his book Trekways of the Wind published by DAT and Nils-Aslak Valkeapää in 1985. A
hunting shaman in a media age It was not at all obvious that Nils-Aslak Valkeapää was going to become an artist At the time he was born, in 1943, art was not looked upon as a man's work among the Sámi, even though their tools were nicely decorated and looked like art. Brought up in a reindeer-herding family, Nils-Aslak was expected to become a reindeer-herder himself. However, as an adolescent, he looked too long into the eyes of reindeer and put down his knife. He had to leave the tundras of Sámiland's free life and find another. The artist-to-be heard the calling of the birds, the roaring of the rivers and the humming of millions of mosquitos. He would grow to include all these sounds, in his words, in his music, and he would create a symphony of nature to enjoy a life-style connecting them to Nature. At the time when Nils-Aslak Valkeapää wanted to become an artist there were few available educations that the Sámi knew about. The closest one was teacher training, some hundred miles travel to the south. His aim was not to become a regular school teacher, but a teacher of his own people. He devoted his life to the arts at a time when the attitude toward everything Sámi was negative and the Sámi were thought to be doomed to extinction. He soon saw that the Sámi artist must organize into professional associations to fight for their rights, including the right to create arts of their own. For a while Valkeapää was the coordinator of cultural projects within the native people's organization, the World Council of Indigenous Peoples. One of the notable achievements during his period as coordinator was a big cultural festival, Davvi Šuvva (Breeze from the north), held in Sámiland in the late 1970s. Valkeapää is the most renowned of all Sámi artists. His impact on contemporary Sámi cultural activities is remarkable. Both directly and indirectly he has been of great help to the artists who emerged only after he waded through the heavy snows to make a ski-track into the modern world of culture. Valkeapää won acceptance for art work among his own people at a time when the assimilationists were starting to believe that their work of deculturizing the Sámi was about to succeed. Many Sámis had ceased using their mother tongue as the main language in their homes, the traditional way of singing, the Sámi yoik, was vanishing, and the people's belief in the importance of traditional values was declining. Nils-Aslak Valkeapää created new interest in the yoik by innovatively combining it with popular music, jazz, and even classical music in an attempt to bring it closer to the taste of "modern" listeners. He did this to revitalize Sámi traditions, to make sure they would continue as vital and intriguing elements of present culture. The yoik does not belong in a museum, it ought to live on as an important medium and a symbol for the Sámi. For many indigenous peoples, traditional singing is part of literature, and even an important basis for modern poetry. This is the case for the Sámi too. In Valkeapää's view, the time has come to renew tradition, through innovation in traditional artistic forms and genres. To challenge the reading, listening, and feeling minds of his Sámi audience, he is creating books for people who never had the opportunity to learn to read in their mother-tongue. He makes music it is possible to dance to, but music which is still a yoik. He paints pictures expressing the rich history of the Sámi people. Valkeapää is an artistic polymath who unites words, images, and music in a modern project, aimed at the future and powered by the past. Just as the old Sámi mastered a range of hunting techniques to survive in a harsh climate, Valkeapää has mastered several artistic techniques. Similarly Valkeapää creates the words and music of a yoik to be performed. The performance conjures up images that either illustrate what the yoik is describing or become a digression based on the associations produced by the yoik. Valkeapää is a hunting Sámi shaman in our modern media age, and he demonstrates the importance of belonging to location, environment and people.
Dear Áilu! I lay down these eagle feathers on your coffin on behalf of all the people you inspired with your way of being and with your art. You gave the Sami and other indigenous peoples in the world wings to fly with in order to survive and be proud. The feathers are attached to a piece of cloth whereupon there is an embroidery representing the sun figure, which you yourself, so often used in your art. Now you, yourself, have flown to the other side of life where you are close to the Sun, our father. Peace be with you! Drawing by Nils Aslak, with portion of eulogy by Harald Gaski from funeral in Kåfjord, Nord Troms, December 15th, 2001
Sketch of Áilu by Hans Ragnar Mathisen in the early 80s. Archive |
