ABSTRACT
I have addressed these perspectives in my earlier work (Kääpä 2014), but in this chapter I want to articulate an alternative perspective on the politics of recognition by investigating ecocritical considerations in Sámi lm culture. These ecological themes, I argue, speak to the exibility and complexity inherent to Indigenous cosmopolitics, a key concept explored in this volume. Below, I address this claim by rst, describing how cinema plays a part in sociopolitical debates about Sámi and non-Sámi “ecological temporality” and by connecting such temporal understandings to the idea of cosmopolitics; second, by relating the relevance of such understandings to perspectives on sustainability; and third, by highlighting Sámi cinema’s distinct notion of “banal everydayness.” As we shall see, Sámi cinema helps its audience visualize alternative ecological existential modes to hegemonic notions of progress and stereotypical ideas of Sámi as the exotic other, even as it testies to diversity and complexity within Sámi identity.
