What is a document institution? A case study from the South Sámi community
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/00220411211200356 |
| Published date | 13 January 2012 |
| Date | 13 January 2012 |
| Pages | 127-133 |
| Author | Geir Grenersen |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
What is a document institution?
A case study from the South Sa
´mi
community
Geir Grenersen
Faculty of Humanities, Program in Documentation Studies,
University of Tromsø, Tromsø, Norway
Abstract
Purpose – The Sa
´mis are the indigenous population of Northern Scandinavia. When the oppressive
policy against the Sa
´mi population in Norway was lightened during the 1960s, many Sa
´mi
communities established language and cultural centers for documentation and development of their
language and cultural heritage as the oral tradition lost its ground in the modernization process. This
paper aims to discuss how Sa
´mi cultural centers use documentation both as a way of remembering the
past and as a political strategy in order to produce evidence for land and water claims.
Design/methodology/approach – The Sa
´mi centers are many-faceted institutions and document
theory is suggested as a theoretical perspective in order to analyze why these institutions were
established and how they are functioning today.
Findings – Two cases are presented. The first shows how the centers use documentation as a
technique for restoring the past. The second is a ruling in the Norwegian High Court that shows a new
turn in what can be accepted as documents proving indigenous land and water claims.
Originality/value – This article is an attempt to introduce document theory as an analytical tool for
analyzing the documentation processes in indigenous cultural centers.
Keywords Indigenous,Cultural centers, Sa
´mi, Documentation,Document, Document theory,
Document management, Culture (Sociology)
Paper type Case study
Background
The Sa
´mi are the indigenous population of the middle and Northern part of
Scandinavia. Their territories are part of four countries: Norway, Sweden, Finland and
Russia. Traditionally they have lived by nomadic reindeer herding, farming, fishing
and hunting. They were organized in small, decentralized units (called “Siidas”in
Sa
´mi) regulated by unwritten agreements very different from the centralized and
hierarchical political structure in the Scandinavian countries (Hansen and Olsen, 2004;
Manker and Vorren, 1962). During the last 50-100 years only a small percentage have
kept up the traditional livelihood; the rest have largely been absorbed in the same
occupational pattern as the majority population (Stordahl, 1996). The Sa
´mi are
accepted as an indigenous group in all four countries, but with unequa l rights
following this acceptance. Because there is no overall registration of the Sa
´mi
population based on ethnic criteria, no one knows exactly how many Sa
´mi there are
today, but there is estimated to be at least 50,000 Sa
´mi in Norway and about
80,000-100,000 in Scandinavia, including Russia. About 12,000 of the Sa
´mi in Norway
speak Sa
´mi as their first language, and around 3,000 still have reindeer herding as their
main occupation (Aubert, 1978, pp. 117-20; Statistics Norway, 2010).
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0022-0418.htm
What is a
document
institution?
127
Received 27 September 2010
Revised 10 May 2011
Accepted 11 May 2011
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 68 No. 1, 2012
pp. 127-133
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/00220411211200356
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