A quiet evening by Iešjohka (Photo by Ellen-J. Kvalsvik 2018).
Water isn’t just for drinking or washing. Water has its own spirit. Water is alive. Water has memory. Water knows how you treat it, water knows you. You should get to know water too.
Wabinoquay Otsoquaykwhan (Anishinaabe Nation)
4.1 Introduction
The word “ethnography” means culture in writing, or writing culture (Mitchell, 2007). A particular society, culture, group or social context is described and represented through a written text (Mitchell, 2007; Van Maanen, 2011). Van Maanen (2011) offers an introduction and his description of writing ethnography connected with my methodological position and my research design. Van Maanen (2011, p. 33) emphasises that ethnography is both a methodology and a method. In the following, I explain how in my research, methodology became methods through abductive procedures. When methodology is developed and matured through reflection the methods that are suited in each case and opportunity reveal themselves (Tomaselli et al., 2008). This also includes what is not suitable and cannot be done in a setting. It is the mixture of methodology, ethics, respect, methods, analysis, reflections and technology that need to be puzzled together to dynamically fit each situation and to build enough trust and confidence to begin to scratch the surface.
4.2 Performance ethnography
To make methods based on the presented methodology, I needed a strategy of inquiry to expose and represent “the dynamic interactions between power, politics and poetics” (Madison, 2008, p. 392, in Hamera, 2011). I wanted to make interventions to generate more just circumstances (Hamera, 2011). Performance ethnography offered me a strategy with both inter- and poly-disciplinary aspects. It also offered a relational institutional situation betwixt and between disciplines that binds methods and meta-methodology. It gave me a vocabulary with which to work in exploring the expressive elements of nature-culture as integrated from multiple areas of expertise as specialised knowledge. In addition, it provided tools to analyse the embodied knowledge of me and others. A knowledge built through all our senses and expressed in practices. Performance ethnography also provided tools for political engaged conceptual knowledge and scholarly engagement to theory in/as practice and pragmatic knowledge, the know-how (Hamera, 2011).
Performance ethnography when used as a method means giving focus to the expressive, denotative sensory elements of an event, like how it sounds, looks, smells, shifts over time, and the affective dynamics of the event (Hamera, 2011). It also positions the researcher in larger conversations in the world and cultural approaches were all parties in the research are found. Hamera (2011) argued that performance ethnography is not easy to operationalise. The complexities of each site and location in place and history, as well as the embodied particularities of the implicated persons, need to be negotiated. There is a mere infrastructure of keywords, formative figures and key questions (Hamera, 2011) to guide us through fieldwork and analysis. They are inseparable from the methodology described in the previous chapter.
4.3 Performing ethnography in indigenous communities
I decided early on that I wanted to walk across the tundra alone to get in touch with the environment without being disturbed. I wanted to learn about the unknown land- and soundscape by walking the land, and by paying attention to the relationship between my own body and the landscape through which I walked. Benediktsson and Lund (2016) describes this as having a sensuous body-to-body conversation. I completed the north-south crossing of the Finnmark tundra in two laps. The first third of the way was done walking in September’s first week of the small game hunting season. The second two thirds of the distance were completed by Nordic skiing during the Polar nights of late January. This is the season for hunting the Northern lights with snowmobile or dogsledding or for Nordic skiing in Polar expedition training.
Friday, September 7, I walked on the 18 km long tractor track from south to north. I dragged along a Nordic wheeled sledge cab filled with my 50 kilos of equipment. I intended to record every impression of sounds and sights with sound recorders, cameras and video. I started by carrying a SLR camera around my neck but found that my much smaller and lighter mobile phone gave better pictures and was easier to access. The SLR had a higher pixel rate than the mobile phone, so I decided to use it to take pictures when there was a possibility that I wanted to enlarge smaller details of a picture. In my pocket I carried a small Dictaphone to record key sounds and sound-impressions from the soundscape. The Dictaphone is more suitable for conversations but being so small and handy I used it intensively throughout the entire fieldwork. Sometimes, I used it to record specific sounds and sometimes I used it because there were no apparent specific sounds. To make sound records of better quality, I used a minidisc recorder (MDR) connected to a microphone on a two-metre cord. In addition to that, I used my mobile phone which recorded sound of a quite satisfying quality. By using the MDR, I could gather specific key sounds by trying to get as close to the source as possible without “polluting” the sound take by sounds that were made by me. The weather was warm and the skies clear so there were no climatic challenges for the electronic equipment. I walked slowly and stopped several times to stand still and listen to the environment. Even though I had no sounds to aim for I recorded the sound of an almost silent environment to try to define what sounds were continuously present in a way that might have made me ignore them after a while. I thought that if there were such sounds present, I would find them when I played the recording in a studio environment, when not interrupted by other impressions.
Walking into the tundra I thought of myself as a native. I realised that even though Finnmark is my county, it is a big county with many ways of being and knowing the land. I consider myself to be a multiple figure – the coming together of identities as timelines of both Norwegian and Sámi descent, as my ancestors came from many different mobility practices and places. I thought about how to behave and how to survive without the company of other people, such as my parents, and grandparents had taught me, and discovering by exploring together with my siblings. The tundra does not scare me. On the contrary, I feel safer alone with nature than with certain types of people. But then again, this always comes with the local training of visioning multiple future events, as well as being prepared for them all. Being alone in the tundra, I had to have a backup plan in case of emergency. I would not have done this without having my background or an agreement of a periodic feedback plan to both my husband and Piera.
On my first visit, I stayed in a small private cabin connected to the mountain lodge from Friday, 7 to Wednesday, 12 September. I presented the ideas for my research to Molleš Piera to set the stage for his reflection about key-sounds in and of nature, cultural sounds and soundscapes. At the destination, there were also the aunt of Piera and his brother with his wife. I talked to them as well and discussed my motives and interests. They all suggested to record the sound of the rivers and the river boat. I asked Piera if I could join him when fishing. By following him around, I got to participate in specific everyday practices as he navigated in the tundra by car or river boat. I learned about his landscape, his meahcci through observing, participating in helping with daily tasks, through small talks and conversations. Sometimes, I also asked direct questions to be clear about how specific things were performed, and sometimes I just followed along to see how the performance progressed. Sometimes, when he could not answer my questions or had things, he wanted me to understand, he told me stories of his experiences in relation to places or practices. The stories were visualised in my head and memorised as a short documentary movie that I put down in words in my fieldnotes as soon as I had a moment alone. By experience, this is the way I remember things best. I also made some actual movie cuts with my mobile phone. I did that to show the relation between specific soundscapes and landscapes and of practices where using sound to navigate was part of the skill.
The hunting season for elk had already started and the hunting season for small game, especially ptarmigans, started September 10. A group of Finnish fishing guests were already there when I arrived. Another group of twelve Norwegian old friends of Piera arrived for ptarmigan hunting with dogs from Saturday morning to Sunday night. I participated in meals and socialised with the guests as one with them. They also paid interest in my research on sound and shared stories with me from their own experiences at the site. I did not follow them hunting but got sounds of shooting and dogs barking from a distance. I did not want to intrude too closely on the guests of the cabin and only attended outside the meals when invited. I felt that by taking a more informal and equal role I could respectfully reflect together with those who wanted to share their thoughts and experiences.
The private cabin provided time off for my open, curious body, which had taken in a lot of impressions performing research twelve hours a day. I needed to take time to disconnect from the relations I made with people and nature and just sit alone in my cabin. Making time and space for “auto-reflexivity” was of outmost importance to enable myself to “stay in the game”. I also needed time to put impressions down as written fieldnotes. This was done by first making a sketch of the day’s main activities on a piece of paper. Then, I provided a calendar with a weather forecast in the back of my book. My ethnographic fieldnotes were only written on the left pages of the book. In this way, I could add things that came to mind later, for example, I could add explanations and further clarifications, my developing analyses and connections to theories. This way, I felt confident in my documentation work and after almost a week on site I had just one page left in the book upon which to write. I joined the Finnish guests returning home and left the same way I came by car on the 12th. Immediately after coming home, I started to translate my ethnographic stories into documents on my computer.
The second two thirds of the way were undertaken by Nordic skiing on Friday, January 18. I went from north towards the south, starting out way too late in the mid-day to walk the 40 km on skis. It had already started to get dark and the last pictures of landscape were taken at the first lodge I passed. In advance, I had made agreements with another tourist host to bring my equipment to the mountain lodge on snow mobile. I left the backpack at the parking space as had been agreed and carried only what was necessary for the 40 km trip. I used a lot of time taking pictures before the darkness arrived. I also recorded sounds of all practices related to snow and frost that was particular to the season as well as the sites I passed. It was 20 degrees below zero Celsius when I started to walk, and it continued to fall towards minus 35 on the big lake of Iešjávri. I recorded the wind and the silence of the frozen rivers and trees. Because of the cold, in case of emergency, I had to save on battery usage of my phone. I used the SLR camera until it froze. I kept the Dictaphone in my pocket so it would not lose power. Sometimes, I recorded long stretches as I skied the tundra and sometimes, I stopped to stand still and listen as I recorded. Due to the cold, the sound did not travel far, and I was surprised by dogsledders as well as by very silent snow mobiles sneaking up behind me.
Halfway, I realised I had forgot my map and compass in the car. I had to trust old skills of navigating. I have a habit of mentally photographing maps in order to memorise new places with which I am not familiar. I do this just to get a feeling about a landscape before I arrive there. Because of this, I could recognise structures like smaller hills and larger lakes as I crossed them. When in nature, I continue to build on that mental map by adding pictures from different angles as I walk. Over time, I achieve a 3D map in my head that I use for orientation. Making plans on my mental map, I realised that I needed to speed up to get to the nearest cabin by nightfall. I had made an agreement with Piera that I would send him a message and he would come and get me if I used too much time on recording. In the evening he came along on his snowmobile to pick me up.
When I arrived at the lodge, there were visitors there. Those included a tourism company with snowmobile tourists and a couple with a dog, doing expedition training, who were staying for just one night. Piera’s children and their friends where there and the family of Piera’s son-in-law were there to celebrate his birthday. His father brought along my backpack. In addition to the guests, an old friend of Piera and a consultant working with a project at the cabin was there over the weekend. During the days I spent there, the temperature dropped to 40 degrees below zero Celsius and the electronic equipment worked for just a few seconds at the time. My mobile phone on the contrary turned out to be tougher than expected. Thus, most recordings outdoors were done by mobile phone.
4.4 Writing impressions of indigeneity
My ethnographic work is painted with multiple brushes and the paint blended together in a picture inspired by the methodology I have described above. I am very fond of the impressionist painters, and I can relate to Van Maanen (2011) arguing that:
For my purposes, it is the impressionists’ self-conscious and, for their time, innovative use of their materials—colour, form, light, stroke, hatching, overlay, frame—that provides the associative link to fieldwork writing. (Van Maanen, 2011, p. 101)
The way impressionists express the experience of a landscape or a situation without including unnecessary and destructive details to the instant perception in that experience is appealing to me. The impressionist tales of ethnography give a personalised perspective about the researcher’s own perceptions at a given place in time and space. The idea is to give attention to the unfamiliar world of the story. The practice of thick description is important in providing ways of knowing, being and doing to the research process and allows the audience to experience with their own senses what the fieldworker has sensed – placing the audience ringside of the research ceremony (Van Maanen, 2011; Wilson, 2008). This tool became useful in presenting the indigenous way of using poetic narratives to include an outsider audience in the indigenous axi-ont-epistem-methodical (Wilson, 2008) way of thinking. The audience may pick up fragments of different ways of knowing in disorganised manners (Van Maanen, 2011). Characters are presented through their own presence with names, faces, lines to speak, motives and performances. Impressionist tales present the performativity of performances in indigenous ethnography (Tomaselli et al., 2008).
4.5 Ethical considerations in indigenous research
The Norwegian Comity of Research Ethics arranged a seminar on Sámi research and research ethics in 2002 (Nagell & Grung, 2002). Tove Bull opened the seminar by problematising the concept “Sámi research” and asked if it was a fruitful concept with which to work? She pointed out that research is always situated and contextual and that it is not possible to ignore different aspects lurking in the bushes when discussing Sámi research, the policy of Norwegian Colonisation and efforts to make earlier injustice just again (Bull 2002 in Nagell & Grung, 2002, p. 4). Bull (in Nagell & Grung, 2002) worried that the concept “Sámi research” connotated compensations for injustice applied to Sámi minorities both as natives and as objects of research. Research has defining powers that may lead to political power. Hence, the battle of language is a battle to define reality (Bull 2002 in Nagell & Grung, 2002, p. 4). Battiste (2008) argued that research in indigenous issues linguistic competence is a requisite. I could not agree more. During this research, I have used a lot of time to work with the online dictionary of North Sámi-Norwegian. I needed words to explain what was not possible to explain with neither Norwegian nor English words. As I am a Sea Sámi, who is familiar with Sámi practices, but has neither the Norwegian nor the English words to describe these I searched for the North Sámi ones that could cover what I meant to present. I found this a better way to provide just explanations of what I saw was going on and how I experienced the ways of knowing, being and doing in Sámi practices. There were also additional words that I felt I needed to understand to get hold on differences and similarities to guide me in the analysis. They are presented in Appendix 1 at the end of the thesis.
Mitchell (2007, p. 63) was concerned with ethnographers’ “production of others” and the positioning of power. He talked about the methodological development in ethnographic research of reflexivity and co-authorship as essential to equalising power and authority. This is especially so in indigenous research where contexts have been highly political and “truth” has been under colonialising forces (Mitchell, 2007). Due to the Norwegian colonialization process, we have indigenous people that have not had the chance to learn the language of their mother tongue, we have indigenous people that have not had the chance to participate in traditional practices and learn about their heritage, and we have all sorts in between (Kramvig, 2017). The indigeneity in Norway has been under such high colonialising pressure that a lot of people have hidden their Sámi heritage to live an easier life in colonialised parts of societies. This has led to new generations being unaware of their indigenous heritage, language and practices. Another respect for indigeneity has come as a consequence of the last decades of work within the UN, as described in Chapter 2. People have started to dig into their background and have found that even their parents had an indigenous background but feared being harassed. Doing indigenous research based on indigenous methodology and methods might contribute in bringing the indigenous way of knowing forward to be taken into considerations in respectful ways (Kramvig, 2017). Doing indigenous research demands humility and respect for different ways of knowing (Østmo, 2013). Kalleberg (2002) expresses his thought about intellectual humility in his writings “About Scientific Humility”:
Intellectual humility is part of the recognition of one’s own limitation in relation to a great and diverse reality and in relation to other people’s knowledge and insights. This implies an openness to one’s own inaccuracy and lack of knowledge, an understanding that one can have something to learn from others. Humility implies both understanding our own sensibility and error, where the boundaries of our own competence go and how we depend on each other as knowing beings. (Kalleberg, 2002, p. 2)
I have left out a great deal of sounds in respect of people’s privacy and in respect of competition to the business. Conversations that I refer to are written on the basis of my memory a few hours after the conversation happened. The conversations are hence based on the impressions I gained from participating in them. There is a possibility that I have had the wrong impression or have misheard or misunderstood the situation. Still, I have chosen to present impressions that I had.
I argue that the skills and the ways of knowing are local and embodied and that no-one else other than those living in a body of particular experiences has that knowledge. Such is also true for the people hosting at Vuolit Mollišjohka and no-one can imitate this. This leads me to the reason why I have not anonymised Molleš Piera but kept the name that he is respectfully referred to by his verddes. The stories I have presented belongs to him. In Sámi co-operation (verddevuotha) and storytelling traditions (máinnastandáidda) it is considered rude to present personal stories as generic and anonymised. The stories you are part of is your property and of no one else to present as theirs. I have also been working with Piera through the fieldwork and this work would not have been abled without his contributions and knowledge. Therefore, I withdrew my application to the Norwegian Centre for Research Data – it would not have been appropriate according to indigenous methodology.