Johan Turi's Ecology

This essay discusses Johan Turi's images (most of them undated) and his text published in 1910, recently translated by Thomas A. DuBois as An Account of the Sámi. It is the first book in Sámi in which the colonized talks back to their colonizers. Together, Turi's Account and his paintings and drawings, some of which are published here for the first time, provide detailed descriptions of the lives of Sámi herders in the mountain areas in northern Sweden, their seasonal migrations towards the coastal areas of northern Norway, and their knowledge, culture, and belief systems. Turi's main objective was to make the state administrations in Sweden and Norway understand Sámi culture and put an end to their detrimental colonial practices so that the Sámi could continue living in their traditional land. I compare his project to studies of the Sámi performed by Swedish authors and scientists, whose views, despite their thorough investigations and “scientific” approaches, gave support to ongoing processes of Swedish/Norwegian colonization and assimilation of Sápmi, i.e. the Sámi and their land. The imagery of Johan Turi adds to his text by demonstrating the hidden as well as the perceptible. As such, his artworks differ fundamentally from those of contemporaneous Swedish landscape painters. Turi's production insists on a holistic and relational acknowledgement of nature, animals, humans, and the spiritual. The need to understand, protect, live within, and respect their environment is fundamental for the Sámi. Together, Turi's artworks and text constitute profound and well-founded arguments for the preservation of Sápmi, in ecological as well as human terms.