ABSTRACT
Chapter five examines how ongoing political struggles which relate to Sámi identity in Finland impact upon the field of Sámi research. Junka-Aikio first situates these new struggles within the transnational framework of self-indigenization ”, and then discusses the role that scholars and academic knowledge production have had in the growth of the phenomenon in Finland. This chapter’s focus is on the more recent literatures relating to “non-status” and Forest Sámi movements which have proliferated in the 2010s. Junka-Aikio argues that these literatures do not challenge only Sámi conceptions of collective identity and community membership, but also the established understandings of “new” Sámi research on which ideas of Sámification of knowledge production have been built. In this context, established definitions of Sámi research as research which “proceeds from a Sámi perspective t” appear increasingly problematic. The chapter suggests that more attention should be placed on the socio-political context in which research relating to the Sámi is produced and circulated today.
