Archival excavations: Searching Sámi Stories

In the project, which is located in Västerbotten County, in the middle of Sápmi, Klara Björk and Jyoti Mistry re-examine the history of the geographical location and the politics that have shaped it. Using decolonial strategies, they look at how knowledge is constructed; how power, historical and political conditions shape knowledge that has been “normalized” through colonial history. By revealing how history is written from the perspective of colonial power and its relation to elided experiences, new and more complex historical stories emerge. What has happened and is happening in Västerbotten is a micro perspective of the larger Swedish colonial project that exploited and continuous to exploit Sápmi.