Eatnamastit – Love Letters with Land, 2025
Thread, metal, wood, made with Sámi craft technique duodji

In 2021, a state-appointed investigation of the policies pursued against the Sámi peoples by the nation states of Norway, Finland and Sweden began. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission aims to map the policies in a historical perspective and their consequences for the Sámi people today. The work EATNAMASTIT – Love Letters with Land reflects on the commission’s work and its consequences, the joy of the possible restart between the Nordic nations and a possibility of coexistence. But there is also darkness, sorrow, and despair rising from the witness statements that tell the opposite; an undercurrent of melancholy over everything the Sámi people have had to endure, from colonization to the mining industry, and now rapid changes of the land due to the climate crisis and a new wave of green colonialism resulting from the majority society’s urgent need to increase energy production.

The shapes of the piece can be seen as a flock of birds bringing messages from their profoundly changing homelands. The viewer can situate themselves in the middle of the piece, between the birds’ paths, and be able to send their greetings to their own homelands. To say they are thinking of the places that were, that still exist, and that are about to be lost and reborn into something we do not know yet. The birds of the piece transmit both horror and sorrow for the immense losses, and the love and solidarity we feel for and with the land and its inhabitants.

Text by Outi Pieski in collaboration with Pauliina Feodoroff