In 1979 a group of Sámi people, wearing traditional dress and calling to “let the river live,” staged a hunger strike outside of parliament in Oslo while others occupied the prime minister’s office. This was the dramatic climax of the People’s Action against the Áltá-Guovdageaidnu Waterway (1978-1982) in opposition to the construction of a dam across the Alta river in northern Norway.
This strategically visible uprising brought Sámi rights into the Norwegian political mainstream and helped lead to Norway’s signing of ILO Convention 169 and the creation of a Sámi Parliament.
Part of a three-year-long dialogue with Sámi artists and scholars, Let the River Flow ,a group show at Oslo’s Office of Contemporary Art, shows how artists were at the center of the action. The multigenerational show also explores the Alta action’s legacy today and the sentiment that the decolonizing process it initiated has stalled and that Sámi culture is in danger today, through such works as Máret Ánne Sara’s Pile o’ Sapmi Power Necklace, which is made from powdered reindeer bones referencing the Norwegian government-imposed reindeer slaughter in northern Norway, a policy Sámi herders is an infringement of indigenous rights.
Full review at Hyperallergic: Unpacking the Legacy of an Indigenous Uprising in Norway
Karen Gardiner 