Harald Gaski

More than Meets the Eye The Indigeneity of Johan Turi's Writing and Artwork

JOHAN TURI was more than a writer. The main purpose of this article is to offer a glimpse of Turis artistic production alongside his prose. In addition to the images originally published in Muitalus samiid birra, Turi produced a number of other pictures as well. None of these had ever been published until the anniversary edition of Turis work in 2010 although it appears that Emilie Demant Hatt may have organized an exhibition of Turis artwork at some point. (1) Turis first pictures were intended as fairly straightforward clarifications of points covered in his text, but gradually, he seems to have grown more expressionistic in his handling of visual genres. His artwork has received little critical attention to date, but it is rather obvious that Turi was influenced by trends in modern art. These he would have come in contact with during his visits to the home of Hjalmar Lundbohm (discussed in Kristin Kuutmas article within this collection), Turis good friend and an avid collector of art. It is also likely that Emilie Demant, an active artist herself, would have brought Turi to the Danish National Museum during Turis visit to Copenhagen after the publication of Muitalus in 1911. At the National Museum, Turi had the same opportunity as Picasso to be inspired by foreign artworks like African masks. His images, as we shall see below, have a strong narrative component and reflect much the same approach to knowledge and storytelling evident in his text. The main intent of this paper is to provide an interpretation and analysis of Turis artwork based on his own way of thinking, his words, and his observations. It is thus important to provide details regarding the time and context in which Muitalus--as well as Turis other works-were produced. My references in the following are to images and page numbers as they occur in the 2010 anniversary edition of Muitalus, although some of the most pertinent images have been reproduced in the pages of this journal as well. (2) The renowned Sami multimedia artist, recipient of the Nordic Councils Prize for Literature, Nils-Aslak Valkeapaa, (3) describes Turis method of writing as stream of consciousness and places him in a distinguished and international cadre of writers. Valkeapaa wished to honor Turi by writing a book about him based primarily on the decades-long correspondence that survives between Turi and Demant Hatt. It is also clear, however, that Aillohas/Valkeapa found in Ovles Juhan Turi a kindred soul. Valkeapaas book Boares nauti Johan Thuri [the old wolf Johan Turi] is a markedly personal examination of the first multimedia artist of Sapmi by perhaps the most famous Sami celebrity of the modern era. From the point of view of Sami literary history, Valkeapaas tribute holds great significance both as a compilation of original materials related to Turis life and relations, and as an aesthetic response paralleling in a certain sense the tribute Turi received from the pen of Knut Hamsun in the immediate aftermath of the original publication of his book, a review that appeared in the Oslo newspaper Verdens Gang in January, 1911 (Hamsun). Like Valkeapaa, I believe that Johan Turi was much more than simply a producer of ethnographic descriptions and depictions--he aimed at being an artist. This I hope to demonstrate in the following discussion, despite the rather limited archival evidence left to us. I believe that the artwork included in the 2010 edition of Muitalus--and formerly completely overlooked by scholars as well as publishers--attests clearly to Turis artistic ambitions. But, as we shall see, Turis interlocutors, Emilie Demant Hatt and Hjalmar Lundbohm, showed little support of Turis expressionistic side. I also hope to dispel the notion that Turis drawings and paintings were somehow naive or simplistic: they are, in fact, sophisticated contemplations that tread a fine line between realism and expressionism, depicting--as I hope to show below--more than would be possible to see from a single vantage point and reflecting Turis understandings of the world and of the activities that he sought to present in his book. …

When the Thieves Became Masters in the Land of the Shamans

The epic yoiks among the Sami from the beginning of the 19 century contain obvious political points of view about the colonization process that the Sami had been and were subjected to from Sweden/Finland, Norway and Russia. There are several examples of yoik texts of this type where the Sami are either referred to as forest people or “noaiddit” – shamans. The shamans were the ones the missionaries most strongly went after, a point that the Sami exploited in their use of the oral mode of double communication expressing resistance to the ongoing theft of land and water. In the songs they slandered the noaidis, evidently to “pacify” the clergymen, at the same time as they allowed the noaidi to be the caretaker of Sami values and as such represent an oppositional power in the texts. This tradition expresses an early awareness about art’s potential as a bearer of several messages at the same time – a purely entertaining and narrative aspect of the story being told as well as an underlying, more serious and insistent layer as a statement of the will to internal resistance and a challenge to resist the pressure from without.

INDIGENISM AND COSMOPOLITANISM: A pan-Sami view of the Indigenous perspective in Sami culture and research

This article explores Sami cultural and literary research in a pan-Sami perspective, contextualizing it in relation to the emergence of similar research among other Indigenous peoples in the world, termed Indigenous methodology. The article summarizes the development within the field so far, arguing for stronger Sami participation in the international discourse on the role of Indigenous peoples within academia. Indigenous methodology is inspired by the development within postcolonial and decolonizing studies and places Indigenous peoples at the centre, while simultaneously seeking to Indigenize academia. The approach questions which values ought to guide research, and to what degree Indigenous peoples should expect research to have a transformative effect on society. What is the role and place of Indigenous peoples’ own values and worldviews in scholarship in general? The article underscores the importance of having developed Sami as an academic language, a great achievement in a world where more and more Indigenous languages are becoming extinct.

Oassi sámi noaidevuođa birra Kaspar Peucera čállosis Commentarius de praecipuis divinationum generibus (Wittenberg 1560): Teakstakritihkalaš hámis jorgalusain ja kommentáraiguin

The text on Sami shamanism in Caspar Peucer’s Commentarius de praecipuis divinationum generibus (Wittenberg 1560): Critical edition, with translation and commentary. Among the sources dealing with the shamanistic skills of the Sami (formerly Lapponian) population, a certain text by Kaspar Peucer has so far been little known. This man of extreme learning was the son-in-law of Philip Melanchthon and a Professor at the University of Wittenberg. A true polyhistor, well versed in Medicine, Geography, Astrology, Theology, etc., Peucer included in his chef-d’oeuvre on divination an elaborate description of the shamanism of the so-called Pilappii . The present article offers a critical edition of this text, based on the editions of Wittenberg 1560 (A), 1572 (B), 1580 (C), as well as Zerbst 1591 (D) and Frankfurt 1593 (E). In addition to translations into North Sami and Norwegian (see Appendix), some contextualisation is offered, which can be summarised as follows: A similar testimony on shamanism is found in the Historia de gentibus Septentrionalibus by Olaus Magnus (Rome 1555). However, that text is not elaborate enough to prove that Kaspar Peucer has copied his description from him. It is more likely that some student among the considerable number of Swedes, Finns and Norwegians that were immatriculated at Wittenberg University in the years following the Reformation, presented this account to Peucer. Many details in the account make it strikingly similar to Sami folk narratives that have been assembled several centuries later. For example, the description of maritime Sami by Anders Larsen (1870–1949), the Sami book by Johan Turi (published 1910) and Sami songs ( joik ) that were collected by Jacob Fellman in the 1820’s can be compared with Peucer’s account. Peucer himself, however, categorised the shamanism of the Sami as a form of theomanteia , i.e. a form of magic which he considered to originate not from the true God, but from the Devil.

Song, Poetry and Images in Writing: Sami Literature

The article is an overview of Sami literature, past and present, with a specific emphasis on the connection between tradition and innovation, in which literature is regarded in a broader sense than only limited to the written word. Thus the relationship between the traditional epic yoik songs and contemporary poetry is being dealt with, as is the multimedia approach that several Sami artists have chosen for their creative expression. It is almost more the rule than an exemption that Sami artists express themselves through the use of more than only one medium. Through the introduction to Sami literature, the reader also gets acquainted with the history and the culture of the Sami, who are the indigenous people of the northern regions of Scandinavia, Finland and the Kola peninsula in Russia.

NILS-ASLAK VALKEAPÄÄ: INDIGENOUS VOICE AND MULTIMEDIA ARTIST

Nils-Aslak Valkeapää (1943–2001) was the greatest Sámi multimedia artist. He made his debut as an author in 1971 and is so far the only Sámi who has been awarded the prestigious Nordic Councils literature prize, for his book of poetry and old photographs Beaivi, áhčážan (1989) (The Sun, My Father [1997]). In this article Harald Gaski provides an analysis of two of Valkeapääs most renowned pieces of lyrical writing. Both are long-poems; the first one is a tribute to indigenous peoples’ values and philosophy while the other one is only available in its Sámi original and thus a linguistic and cultural manifestation. It is a challenge, therefore, for the author of this essay to explicate for a foreign reader why and how the poem represents a migrating reindeer herd and why the content of both poems is relevant and important for indigenous peoples today.