Max Mackhé, photo © Ellen Berit Dalbakk A while ago I posted a relatively long post about the problematic aspects of appropriating a Saami identity as an artistic statement as manifested by Lisa Vipola’s art exhibition Authentic Saami Art. Shortly after, the Swedish musician Max Mackhé - a speaker of North Saami who has made a name of himself by advocating Saami rights and protesting against neo-colonialism in Sápmi through the medium of music in North Saami, Swedish and English - made headlines by being included on the Norwegian Saami parliament electoral roll, and last week I sadly didn’t have the time to comment on this story, so I will take the opportunity to do so now instead, even if I might not do so in as much detail as I did when it came to Vipola’s exhibition. Max Mackhé, wearing a South Saami gapta from Härjedalen. It is questionable if he’s been allowed to use the...

Lisa Vipola, wearing her faux gákti. Photo © Anna Sunna/SR Sameradion In my studies, I focus in particular on the artistic and literary performance of Indigeneity. In short, I tend to describe the work leading up to what I hope will one day translate into a PhD as a study into how members of minority and indigenous communities use language, history and contemporary experiences of duality, social exclusion and internal as well as external discrimination in their textual and artistic works, as a way to transcend and challenge a neo-colonial understanding of what constitutes an ‘authentic’ indigenous and/or minority identity today. I try to make it a point in studying literature and art that I see as a manifestation of a non-essentialised right to self-definition, void of Western influences, so last week’s news of an exhibition called ‘Äkta Sameslöjd’ (Authentic Saami Handicraft), had me looking into an art project that...