The Story of Terra Nullius
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– Variations on the Land[s] of Saepmie¹ that Nobody Owned
The knowledge systems that Western academia is based upon, with few exceptions, are dependent on a humanocentric perspective. This epistemic ignorance justifies the continued exclusion of the philosophical and intellectual traditions of Indigenous or other non-Western societies that often have radical different approaches, values, and perspectives. The implications are many and serious.
Keywords: Indigenous epistemology, Sámi knowledge systems, Sámi ontology, Vaapste, green industry, Indigenous sovereignty, land, terra nullius
At Finnbogen
“Listen, child of my child, to the stories I tell. All you see before you is now as it once was, and it is how it will continue to be long after you and I are gone from this realm”
The last time I saw my grand-uncle, at a family gathering, he spoke to me of the land and how it had shaped our ancestors and how it continued to shape us. He made sure to teach those of us listening the names and places of his childhood, and he made sure we knew that these lessons came from his elders and their elders. Three months later I received the news of his passing, and I realized then why he put such importance on teaching us that day; Indigneous worldviews, our ontologies, are shaped by our relationship to land. It is this relationship that defines our existence, because the land is where we are born from, remain attached to, and must one day return to in order to be united with our ancestors. When we are dispossessed of our homelands, it is this relationship that is at stake and with it, our sovereignty and our surety of our place in the world. No wonder then, that one of the more favoured colonial strategies is to implement a language to bodily alienate the people from the land². Instead of Saami, the people came to be known as the “Lapps”, a term that is today regarded as highly derogatory. No longer Saepmie, our homelands instead became Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia.
This alienation is not recent, nor is it a thing of the past. It is both then as well as now, and likely it is also in our future. From the time of ‘first contact’, the story of Indigenous Peoples has far too often been one of “no speak and no-voice. It has been a story of silence, of invisibility, of conquest, marginalization and powerlessness”.³ As a consequence, Indigenous knowledge systems, as well as our world-views, perspectives, and values have been equally silenced and disregarded. This is a process of epistemicide; the deliberate destruction of the knowledge and cultures of Indigeous populations, of their memories and ancestral links and their manner of relating to others and to the land.⁴ The Sámi scholar, Rauna Kuokkanen, has conceptualized this continued silencing as an epistemic ignorance⁵, which refers to the ways in which academic theories and practices ignore, marginalize and exclude other than dominant Western⁶ epistemic and intellectual traditions.⁷ The implications of such are many and serious, but none more so than the continued enabling of alienation between land and people. How so, curious minds may ask. The answer is neither simple or easy.
Most Indigenous worldviews recognize that the land is a living entity with a subjective will.⁸ Still, law-and decision makers, informed and governed by Western ideologies and ideas that enforce control and domination, disregard this subjectivity in their practice. The land we live on is, to them, nothing more than an object for the taking. Something that may be claimed for selfish reasons in the pursuit of financial gain.⁹ This reflects what might be termed an ontological conflict “where encounters with different ways of knowing and living with the land are central”.¹⁰ But to begin to understand this conflict, we need to take a step back and remove ourselves from an Indigenous context, traversing instead into the Age of Enlightenment that for so long has been considered the foundation of modern political and intellectual culture in the West.¹¹
The Age og Enlightenment and the Lockean Principle of Property
Heavily influencing the avant-garde of Europe in the 17th and 18th century, the movement of Enlightenment that would come to dominate the realm of ideas for centuries to come, promoted a sovereignty of reason, by which a marked preference for empiricism and rational thought was encouraged which fully embraced the idiom of ‘seeing is believing’.¹² In Europe, where the religious disputes of previous centuries had all too often been the cause of political upheaval and armed conflicts, Faith and with it, the Church, was soon believed to have corrupted Western civilization.¹³ The consequence of which was that the Age of ‘Reason’ not only advanced the often-cited ideals of liberty, technological progress and constitutional government; it also promoted the separation of state and church.¹⁴ Born in 1632, the British empiricist John Locke was a leading advocate for the separation, and he is often remembered precisely as such.¹⁵ But this was far from Locke´s only memorable achievement. He also holds the somewhat dubious honour, from an Indigenous perspective at least, of having fathered the Lockean principles of property.¹⁶
The Lockean principles of property argue that any “primitive” society, if they were nomadic, would be excluded from any property rights to the lands that they had lived on and used for times immemorial.¹⁷ The cornerstone of his argument was the idea of terra nullius, or ‘nobodies land’, a principle often used in international law to justify claims to territories. Locke basically stated that the principle of terra nullius was eligible if the lands in question were populated by “primitive” peoples. To put this somewhat into context, in the glory days of imperial enterprise and colonial expansion, it was considered an established fact that Indigenous and other non-Western cultures were evolutionary dead ends. It naturally followed that the people in question were correspondingly arrested in development.¹⁸ The popular convention was that they lacked the biological imperative needed to thrive and advance; simple rejects of nature that were unable to advance past their present state of development and their nomadic lifestyle. In one fell swoop, Locke and the Age of Enlightenment removed any moral obstacle to the annexing and dispossession of populated land, which allowed for a colonial advancement of, among others, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway/Sweden.¹⁹
In case of the latter, there is clear evidence made by a statement from the well-known Norwegian historian, P. A. Munch. In 1852, Munch claimed that it made very little difference if “Lapps” were the original population in the Saami homelands as it was “only settled with the coming of our Ancestors. And it is the first settlement, with which the history of a Country truly begins”.²⁰ From his point-of-view, Saepmie was ‘terra nullius’, which according to the Lockean principle of ownership gave him the moral justification needed for the continued dispossession of the land.²¹ From a Saami perspective however, our homelands are unceded²² as “[w]e have never been conquered in war and we have never signed agreements with any state”.²³ And even if we had, how could we claim the land to sell it?
Vaapste – the land that nobody owned.
The concept of land ownership is one of Western make. This notion of property embodies values and relationships informed by the great chain of being, a hierarchical structure of all matter and life which disregards the subjective will of non-human beings. Saami values and beliefs on the other hand promote a different perspective. Sámi philosophy teaches us that the world is made of relations, “constituted of an infinite web of relationships” that “apply to everybody and everything, including the land”, which is perceived as a living “physical and spiritual entity”.²⁴ In a Saami world-in-relation, to borrow a term from the Martinique-born writer and thinker Édouard Glissant²⁵, subjective will is as such afforded to all; to the land, the rivers, our ancestors long passed, animals and other creatures or beings.²⁶ It might not be the selfhood so eloquently defined by Descartes “I think, therefore I am”²⁷, but it is nonetheless there, present in what we might term other-than-human beings.²⁸
Within this understanding of the world, to own land is a completely foreign idea. Rather, the land and people exist interdependently in a close interaction of sustaining and renewing the balance of the world. This ensures the maintenance of a good life, socially, economically, spiritually and in respect to health.²⁹ This is the way of bïerkenidh taught to children from a young age, and maintained in our ways of knowing, being and doing. When I was a child, my summers would see me in Vaapste and the surrounding municipalities, in the home community of my tjidtjie³⁰, under the guardianship of my aahka³¹. Back then, summer seemed almost endless, and my days were filled with playtime, running barefoot in the grass, playing with friends and cousins who, like me, spent much of their summer with aahka. And yet, I also have fond memories of sitting by aahka’s kitchen table, listening to my elders speak of times passed and of people long gone. I also remember long walks with my cousins, guided by our aahka or aunties, where these stories came to life in the surrounding landscapes, and in the cemeteries with markers of lives lived; brought into being through the words of our guides. Young as we were, the feeling of taking our place in a shared history and the sense of finding home in a land where few of us lived full time, was profound. So much so that even decades after aahka’s’ passing, we remember, and we pass on stories and experiences amongst ourselves and to the younger generation.
Tjidtjie and her cousin together with their aunt. They are standing in a cemetary, having stopped by the grave of their uncle.
Vaapste, which is perhaps better known by its Norwegian name of Vefsn, is a municipality in the County of Nordland on the Norwegian side of the border. It is home to numerous South-Saami communities, amongst them the kin of my tjidtjie. Each summer, aahka would introduce me to this land, and teach me that my will was not above that of the land. “If I listened to the land and the waters” she would say, “I would always survive on them “. Living in this way, by way of bïerkenidh, we could ensure that “all you see before you now, is as it once was, and it is how it will continue to be long after you and I are gone”.
As the years passed, I came to know the history of Vaapste. Not through any official records, which frankly say little about the Saami presence in the area³². Instead, I was taught a history compiled of stories that has been told for generations, found in the land itself; the rivers, the trees, the animals, and the ground we walked. For centuries, long before the Nations of Norway and Sweden were conceived of, my People made use of and lived on this land, though they did not own it. Sadly, this was not a perception shared by the colonizing forces that from the 11th century onward began to make great inroads into Saepmie.³³ The colonizers believed in owning the land. And so, they laid claim to the land that the Saami did not believe could be owned.
In time the colonial expansion created a great change in Saepmie and Saami values, beliefs, worldviews, and livelihoods was forced to give way to those belonging to the new and self-titled landlords. Still, as Indigenous people have had to learn, adaption is key.³⁴ For generations we made adaption into a form of art, and despite the enforcement of colonial rules to govern the land, and contrary to the official policies meant to make the problem of a Saami people go away, the Saami communities of Saepmie, and of Vaapste persisted. ³⁵ They continued to honor and acknowledge the subjectivity of the land, teaching their children and their children’s children that if we only learnt to listen to the land and waters, we could continue to live off them. Nevertheless, the epistemic ignorance following colonization continues to reign. Today, if I were to revisit the landscapes of my happy childhood, they would no longer be as they once were.
Of course, change is inevitable and we are all subject to time and change. The change that has lately come upon Vaapste however, is not of natural or arbitrary make. Like a wound scourged into the landscape, constructions, the purpose of which is to promote ‘sustainable extractive industry’, are now slowly appearing on the paths that aahka and I, alongside those that came before us and in the envisioned company of those that had yet to come, once walked. At Øyfjellet, where the Jillen Njaarke sijte, a unit comprised of several reindeer herding families, have their grazing land, such a wound has been inflicted. In 2019 the Norwegian government awarded Øyfjellet Wind, a subdivision of Eolus Wind, concessions to build and operate 75 windmills. For years now, the Jillen Njaarke sijte have been embroiled in a legal battle with Eolus Wind. But they are not alone.
Sami reindeer husbandry areas on Øyfjellet in Vefsn are currently being demolished by wind power developers. It is, in essence, the first big wound which also allows for further damage to be done. Photo collage by Tomas Colbengtson.
In fact, a large part of the concessions granted to energy development in the last years, continue to show disregard of the relationship between the Saami and Saepmie as large parts of the latter are being relinquished to industry.³⁶ The wounds that these concessions cause are deemed negligible because wind power, after all, is “a renewable and emission-free energy source that is well suited for large-scale energy production”; a sacrifice deemed acceptable in the pursuit of “a carbon free future”, as articulated by Statkraft, a state-owned Norwegian enterprise.³⁷ For the Saami communities whose homelands are implicated by such development however, the wounds caused are abhorrent. And yet, far too often we are told that the good of the many outweighs the good of the few. It is not surprising to see who takes on the role of the latter. In my tjidtjie’s homecommunity, in Vaapste, it is Jillen Njarke siijte.
It is all too easy to claim that the ontological conflict we see in Vaapste centers on abstract things – on epistemologies and systems of knowledge, values and morals, worldviews and perspectives. But there is a more concerning aspect to such conflicts.
The UN's report on biodiversity of 2019 states that Indigenous Peoples, numbering only 5% of the global population, are responsible for 80% of Earth's biodiversity.³⁸ In face of massive environmental change and the threat of destructive extinction, the actual impact of such has
been less severe or avoided in areas held or managed by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities […] Nature managed by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities is under increasing pressure but is generally declining less rapidly than in other lands.³⁹
In other words, the issue of ontological conflict might very well be one of survival. More and more, I think it is clear that how humanity interacts with land, is not only a question of Indigenous sovereignty and justice after centuries of [ongoing] colonialism, it has also become an issue of our future. Where do we see ourselves moving in the next 50, 30 or even 10 years? We stand at a crossroad where the Nation states of the world may continue the gross subjugation of the land and the disappropriate abuse of resources, or we Indigenize how we interact with our surroundings, recognizing
“[…] the positive contributions of Indigenous peoples to sustainability” such as their unique “knowledge, innovations and practices, institutions and values of Indigenous peoples…that often enhances their quality of life, as well as nature conservation, restoration and sustainable use, which is relevant to broader society.”⁴⁰
Taking the latter path would allow us to leave behind a continued life for those that follow, where I one day might tell my child or my grandchild, as my aahka once told me “all you see before you is now as it once was, and how it will continue to be after you are gone from this realm”.
References:
¹ This is the South Saami spelling of the Saami homeland.
² Jernsletten, Kristin. 2011. "The hidden children of Eve : Sámi poetics : guovtti ilmmi gaskkas." University of Tromsø: pp. 4.
³ Goduka, I. N. 1999: «Indigenous epistemologies – ways of knowing: Affirming a legacy», South African Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 13, No. 3: pp. 26
⁴ Santos, Boaventura de Sousa. 2014. Epistemologies of the South : justice against epistemicide: Routledge: pp. 18
⁵ I have also heard epistemic ignorance being referred to as an epistemic violence, which enable “ways of knowing - and the disabling of others “ that legitimize or endorse the practices of dominance and subjugation (Harlin and Pieski 2020:143). ‘Epistemic injustice’ is also used in literature, but more to refer to the harm that Indigenous peoples suffer on account of “domestic” justice systems, and whereby foreign values are made the norm they are judged by (Tsosie 2012:1136)
⁶ Distinguished, not as a particular location or social group, but rather as a collective philosophical, moral, and scientific doctrine that is widely accepted as being the dominant collective discourse as far as research goes,
⁷ Kuokkanen, Rauna. 2008: What is Hospitality in the Academy? Epistemic Ignorance and the (Im)Possible Gift, Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies Vol. 30, No. 1, pp. 60
⁸ Wilson, Shawn. 2001. What Is an Indigenous Research Methodology? Vol. 25. pp. 176 Porsanger, Jelena. 2012. "Indigenous Sámi religion : general considerations about relationship." In, 37 - 45. Gland: IUCN, cop. pp. 38.
⁹ E.g., Short, Damien. 2003. "Reconciliation, Assimilation, and the Indigenous Peoples of Australia." International Political Science Review - INT POLIT SCI REV 24:491-513: pp. 491-2. Henare, Amiria. 2005. Museums, Anthropology and Imperial Exchange: Cambridge University Press: pp. 68-70.
¹⁰ Kramvig, Britt & Margrethe Pettersen. 2016. Living Land - belove as above. Living Earth Fieldnoted from the Dark Ecology 2014-2017 Publisher: Sonic Act. 131-141: pp. 135
¹¹ Brewer, Daniel. 2008. The Enlightenment Past: Reconstructing Eighteenth-Century French Thought: Cambridge University Press. pp. 1
¹² Livingstone, David N., and Charles W. J. Withers. 1999. Geography and Enlightenment: University of Chicago Press. Bennett, Tony. 2004. "Pasts beyond memory : evolution museums colonialism." In. London ;,New York: Routledge.
¹³ Jacob, Margaret C. 2001. The Enlightenment: A Brief History with Documents: Bedford/St. Martin's.
¹⁴ Outram, Dorinda. 2006. Panorama of the Enlightenment: J. Paul Getty Museum.
¹⁵ Feldman, Noah. 2005. Divided by God: America's Church-state Problem-- and what We Should Do about it: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
¹⁶ Korab-Karpowicz, W. Julian. 2010. A History of Political Philosophy: From Thucydides to Locke: Global Scholarly Publications.
¹⁷ Ravna, Øyvind. 2002. " Rettsvernet for samiske rettigheter fram til siste halvdel av 1700-tallet – og betydningen av dette i dag " Kritisk Juss (29).
¹⁸ Bennett, Tony. 2004. Pasts beyond memory : evolution museums colonialism. London: Routledge: pp.59.
¹⁹ A Short commentary on Land Claims in BC, Union of Britich Colombia Indian Chiefs. Retrieved, 21st. Miller, Robert J.; Ruru, Jacinta; Behrendt, Larissa; Lindberg, Tracey (2010). Discovering indigenous lands : the doctrine of discovery in the English colonies. Oxford University Press
²⁰ Munch, Peter Andreas 1852. Det Norske Folks Historie. Christiania [Oslo]: pp. 4. This perception on the Saami and Saepmie was not unique to Munch. Already in the border treaty of 1752 between Denmark-Norway and Sweden-Finland, “Lappish Nations survival” was said to be dependent on reindeer herding. This reflects the dominant view that those of a “Lappish origin” not associated with reindeer herding had degenerated and now found themselves on the brink of extinction. The authentic “Lapp”, without fail, was the reindeer herder.
²¹ Gjestrum, John Aage. 1995. "Utstilling av levende mennesker : ei historie om samisk kultur og fremmede blikk." Dugnad Vol. 21, nr. 1 (1995):93-108 : pp. 102
²² I use unceded in the context of an international language of Indigenous rights, where the term reflects situations where land has never been ceded.
²³ Magga, Ole Henrik. 1996. "Sami Past and Present and the Sami Picture of the World " In Awakened Voice. The Return of Sami Knowledge, edited by Elina Helander. Guovdageaidnu: Nordic Sami Institute: pp. 76.
²⁴ Kuokkanen, Ruana. 2006. "The Logic of the Gift: Reclaiming Indigenous Peoples’ Philosophies." In Re-Ethnicizing the Minds?: Cultural Revival in Contemporary Thought, edited by Thorsten Botz-Bornstein and Jürgen Hengelbrock, 251-271. Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi. pp. 260, 258.
²⁵ Glissant, Édouard. 2006. une nouvelle région du monde. Paris: Gallimard.
²⁶ Law, John. 2015. “What´s wrong with a one-world world?”, Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory Vol 16.
²⁷ Descartes, Renè. 1644. Principia Philosophia. Apud Ludovicum Elzevirum: pp. 31.
²⁸ Cadena, Marisol de la & Mario Blaser. 2018. A World of Many Worlds: Duke University Press. pp. 4
²⁹ Porsanger. 2012, pp. 39.
³⁰ This is the South Saami word of mother
³¹ A South Saami word meaning grandmother. While most commonly used as such, it has also been used in the sense of “old woman”.
³² E.g. https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vefsn
³³ Kent, Neil. 2018. The Sami People of the North: a social and cultural history. C. Hurst Limited
³⁴ Baglo, Cathrine. 2011. På ville veger? Levende utstillinger av samer i Europa og Amerika. Universitetet i Tromsø.
³⁵ Not in the least the highly devastating assimilation policies of the 18th, and 19th centuries
³⁶ https://www.nve.no/konsesjonssaker/, accessed 31.01.2021
³⁷ https://www.statkraft.com/what-we-do/wind-power/, accessed 20.10.2020.
³⁸ https://ipbes.net/news/Media-Release-Global-Assessment, accessed 31.01.2021
³⁹ Ibid
⁴⁰ Ibid
