NATURE PEOPLE IN MODERN TIMES

By Jungle Svonni. Photo by Tilo Wondollek.

Over the world there is a growing interest in going back to live closer to nature. Off the grid. More in harmony with your surroundings, both nature and people.

Indigenous knowledge slowly starts to be more and more valued. Maybe because its rapidly disappearing. More and more. And faster and faster, day by day, hour by hour.

I am indigenous myself and privileged by living in one of the two wildest and most pristine areas of Europe. Sápmi. (the other being Transylvania).

Still I’m sitting here 300 km north of the arctic circle, in a modern house in front of a computer, right now.
Instead of in a lávvu (tipi) surrounded by reindeers, in the wilderness. Far away from roads and electricity. Thats where I actually would like to be right now. And where I have been, at times. And that is also where many others would like to be. Even though they are somewhere else, doing something else.

Also read: Lávvu – Sami Tipi/teepee now and before

Why is it so?

The answer could be a very long one. But we been talking about some reasons in other posts. So I will not go in depth in all the aspects.

Lets keep the focus on Sápmi to make it easier. Although much of this applies to other places too.

The outlawing and persecution of shamanism during 400 years. Resulted in us humans drifting apart from the unity with nature.
It was forbidden by strict laws sometimes death penalty to commune with nature in a spiritual way.

The last 150 years the obligatory school system started to become more and more problematic. By preventing the children from getting a proper education. It nearly broke me. At the age of 7 when I started school. I was terrified of the fact that I was doomed to grow up nearly without education. Since I knew that the time between 7 and approximately 18 is the most important and efficient time for learning.

To live in nature, to read the snow, to read the ice, to read the weather, to hunt, to fish, to make fire in the rain, to heard reindeers, to tame reindeers, to have the stamina to ski for long distances with heavy loads, to live and feel comfortable in a lávvu (tipi), to slaughter, to read the ear marks of running reindeers and most important of all. How to commune with spirit, with nature.

This education is hard to get if you are confined to spend a lot of time in a school.
These are not things you can learn by spending a week camping.
It takes years, of constant training. And it takes a lot longer time to learn it as an adult, then if you grow up doing it.

Luckily I spent pretty much all the time that I was free from school, learning these things. But that was far from enough. Much had to be learnt later in life when I moved back out to the mountains full time. And I’m still learning. Things that the school prevented me from learning.

For some years I lived only on hunting and fishing. Everyone can understand that that is a harsh life. But I think that the most difficult aspects are not related to the nature. Its the legal one. The laws are made for people in a very different society. Where hunting is a sport for rich people. You can not live by those laws if you live in nature.
That is one big reason preventing people from living in and with nature.

The reindeer herding has also undergone huge changes during the last 50-60 years.
My father was born in the 1930s. In a lávvu. In that time most reindeer herding families lived in lávvus or goahtis (similar mobile construction) all the time in order to be able to migrate with the reindeers. I know of one family that every year migrated 700 km, one way. Between mid summer and mid winter. Before foreign laws  and land destructions started to restrict us so much. Now 300 km is considered a quite long migration.  
Of course in that time they where in very close connection with their reindeers, and they where also milking.

But it was a time of changes. The school system took the children from their families and their education, for more time then was good for preserving all the knowledge.

In the beginning of the 1950s when my father was 15 the politics shifted. Now there where no more Sámis. Sámis where to be assimilated with the colonizers. So Sámis should live in houses.
The government built houses to all families.

From what I heard from the old ones. Many where quite happy about that. A house is more luxurious then a lávvu or goahti, so it seamed to make life easier.
But far from all where happy about it. Especially after a few years when they saw the consequences. Something very important in our culture and way of living died.

A house can not move and migrate with the reindeers.
So the new common order became like this:

The woman and children started to live in the house. More or less permanently. While the men kept migrating with the reindeers and living in lávvus most of the year. They could only spend a few months of the year in the house when the reindeers where close.

So the whole traditional family structure was gone!
Something died.

The Sámi society used to be quite matriarchal. (And still is compared to our colonizers) But this new order created a separate mens world out in the mountains and forests. With a lot less of feminine values.

In the end of the 1960s beginning of 1970s came next big change.
The snowmobile came. In a way it was the answer to the prayers of all reindeer herders. That all had been skiing for endless distances tired and hungry. Everyone had dreamt about being able to just «fly» over the snow, long distances. And this enabled the men to spend more time with their families again. Although mostly in the house(es), instead of in the nature. By this time it was common to have two houses, for different seasons/areas. Today three houses is the norm in the area where I am from.

But the consequences over the years turned out to be quite severe.

To finance all this you needed a lot more reindeers.
The land and the number of reindeers where no longer enough for everyone. So more and more people got pushed out. Into the society of the colonizers. Less and less children could have a future with the reindeers, in the nature.

And the reindeers changed behavior. The became more wild and more difficult to control. The contact between human and reindeer started to disappear more and more. There was no longer need for tame reindeers for pulling sleds in the winter and carrying loads in the summer. And the milking of reindeers where long gone.

I once heard a reindeer herder my age, from Guovdageaidnu, publicly stating that the snowmobile is the worst thing that ever happened to us Sámis.

Unfortunately (according to me) that reindeer herder represents a minority of us.

But some reindeer herders think like that. That it would be better to live in a more similar way to what we used to before the 1950s. Of course today nothing would stop you from using internet or buying new sunglasses when passing a modern settlement. It wouldn’t be about going back in time. But about cutting out those parts of the so called modern society that have disrupted and harmed the nature and our own society.  Better for the nature. And better for us.

So why don’t we just do that?

Well for one thing. Its not legally allowed anymore. We are legally not allowed to raise our children close to nature living in lavvus or goahtis! Although its been done for thousands of years. We are also legally required to have a fixed and permanent address. The laws regarding «home» slaughtering and selling makes it pretty much impossible to do anything animal related in a simple and small scale. If you only have a 100 reindeers or 30 sheep you are likely to end up paying for it like a quite expensive and time consuming hobby.

In some places the nature is so destroyed by highways, mines, towns and so on. That the reindeer herders in those areas can’t migrate with their reindeers neither on skies or with snowmobiles. The reindeers have to be moved by trucks. (Not where I’m from though) And in some areas the primal forest necessary for the tree lichen to grow are cut down by the colonizers. So that food for the reindeers has to be bought, in the form of pellets. (lichen is the main food source for the reindeer). So in those areas the reindeer herders can’t even dream about doing anything in a more traditional and nature friendly way.

Another reason is that reindeer herding is done in community. Community is usually a good thing. But it also limits your personal freedom. One single person of family that wants to go back more to nature is very limited if not the whole community or at least the majority wants to do the same. To work together in a community you have to work in a similar way to make it work. And snowmobiles and ATVs are faster then a person on foot or on skies.
So the one on foot can easily end up just being in the way for the others. And reindeers that are normally herded with snowmobiles and ATVs are very difficult to herd on foot the next day. They are to wild.

And those that would like to do things in a more nature close way are spread out, all over Sápmi. You don’t choose a community (a reindeer herding district) You are either born in to it or married in to it. So you just have to adapt and make the best of it.

And there is not enough space and reindeers for all of us, anymore. Our land becomes smaller and smaller, day by day, as the colonizing society grows, with deforestation, damed up rivers for electricity, windmill parks that scares away all animal life covering more and more land And each family needs more and more reindeers to cope with the additional costs this invading society brings us. Snowmobiles, ATVs, gasoline and so on, have the same prices, no matter if you have a 100 reindeers or a 1000 reindeers.

Now we are entering a new era. The era of drones and GPSes.
It is only just in the beginning. But where will it lead?

I don’t know if I want to live to see that…

I think that this. The obstacles for living in and with the nature is something that should not be seen as local problem. But rather a global problem. That just might still be possible to remedy. We still have a few quite large almost untouched areas of nature here in Sápmi. Like where I’m from. And there are still people alive here in Sápmi today, that where born and raised full time in lavvus or goahtis. And more people that like me are raised by people with that background. So we didn’t just have to read about it in books but could also listen and learn from family members with firsthand experience from that lifestyle.

One of the best times of my life was the last summer my grandmother was alive. I was 14 and the two of us lived in Kattuvuoma. Far away from roads and electricity. She told me that she was going to die in the fall, she missed my grandfather. So she told me her life story during that summer. A life very close to nature. And together with a man that still carried a lot of our old forbidden shamanic knowledge.

LÁVVU – SAMI TIPI/TEEPEE NOW AND BEFORE

WHAT DO INDIGENOUS PEOPLE HAVE IN COMMON?