Introduction

Journalist Sami Soininen writes that the task was to define what remotest means and then study maps to see where a place matching such criteria could be found. Possessing many kinds of natural resources, the North has at different times been a focus of diverse geopolitical and economic interests and endeavours. Northern Indigenous peoples have gained their own institutional structures of autonomy and their activities increasingly take place in non-state transnational channels where they fight for their rights to resurrect their societies. The northern epistemic gaze is exemplified here by the Sami people and their lifeworld. The Sami are an Indigenous people living in the areas of four nation-states: Finland, Norway, Sweden and Russia. Sami perspectives and concepts have however been marginalised in schools, by Western knowledge and in the Christian religious tradition. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.