GAAJE ECHO
ECHO
A project initiated by “Riddu Riddu – indigenous festival” and the Norwegian Ombud of gender and race equality.
(Likestillingsombudet) to question how we sámi people behave and characterize ourselves, how we define ourselves, and range our fellow Sami and their status according to the knowledge of the language, culture, loss of language and other cultural attributes lost through the Norwegianization processes.
How do we take on the majority of the descriptions of us?
Textile artist / professor: Hilde Hauan Johnsen
Art student: Marie Skeie
Dancer: Elle Sofe Henriksen
Actor: Anna Åsdell
Musician: Magnus Tornesis, and Ada Einmo Jürgensen
We decided to use “The Law of Jante” as our starting point. The attitudes were first formulated in the form of the 10 rules of Jante Law by the Danish-Norwegian author Aksel Sandemose in his satirical novel A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks.
The law of Jante:
- You shall not think you are special
- You shall not think you are of the same standing as us
- You shall not think you are wiser than us
- Don’t fancy yourself as being better than us
- You shall not think that you know more than us
- You shall not think you are more important than us
- You shall not think that you are good at anything
- You shall not laugh at us
- You shall not think anyone cares about you
- You shall not think that you can teach us anything.
These laws were put on posters all over the festival area and in 3 Sami languages: Russian, Norwegian and English.
There was a symposium in a big lavvo about the thematics. Dolls with questions, which the festival people could answer, were placed around the festival area.
On July 22, 2011, as we were at the festival working on our project, the Utøya terror attacks happened. We quit the whole project. Reality has shown the worst possible consequences of the behavior we were discussing.