ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the political thought of the Sami artist, politician and journalist Nils-Aslak Valkeapaa regarding Saminess and the international Indigenous peoples' movement. It explores how Valkeapaa constructs his conception of the Sami as an Arctic people that has distinctive origins of its own as well as an affinity with the world's other Indigenous peoples in customs, culture, history and thinking. The chapter seeks to follow Valkeapaa's dialogical message through the years and discusses what Valkeapaa sought to do with his texts, performances and speeches in the national and international political and social context in which he created his works. It analyses comprises Valkeapaa's works Greetings from Lappland. The Sami–Europe's forgotten people and Trekways of Wind eleven recordings from the Living Archives of the Finnish Broadcasting Company. Valkeapaa's idea of the connection among the Arctic peoples was clearly visible in Terveisia Lapista and in the interviews he gave in the 1970s.