Máret Ánne Sara – 'The reindeer is central to our philosophy'

Sámi philosophy and Indigenous science means that you are connected to everything around you

Everything is constantly in a relationship with each other

The Sámi people are indigenous to Sápmi

Sámi reindeer herding is a cornerstone in the Sámi culture

Nowadays it's a minority within our community that still practice reindeer herding

The reindeer is very central to our philosophy, our daily life and our needs as human beings

The ancient tales already are connecting us to the ground, to earth and waters through the reindeer

So one ancient tale is that as long as you can still hear the heart of the young doe beating in the ground then we have a future still, so encouraging this closeness, listening, communicating with land, with these kind of sacred philosophical notions

Duodji is a way to honour materials and resources

In traditional stories we have a contract with animals the reindeer promises the human all the meat it's carrying

It knows it's carrying so much good meat but in exchange it requires the human being to protect it and to give it a clean death

The third promise is to use everything within it

I think that's a very important core

Every time you process materials you are sort of fulfilling this philosophical contract within yourself as a human being and in relation to your surroundings

Our people came to our regions following the reindeer

There's not much that can grow or live it's very extreme Arctic cold conditions so the reindeer is also wholly for our survival because it provides us with food, clothes, everything that human being has needed, so even though reindeer herding has modernised there is still this spiritual and physical connection to the reindeer that is very important

The modern Western legislations are pressuring and breaching and destroying that by forcing regulations that are in collision with our logic

Pile o’ Sápmi was a piece I made in 2016. We were facing a forced slaughter of reindeers and this government forced culling was not considering individual human rights of reindeer herders or the possibilities of people to live with these consequences of being pushed out of a reindeer husbandry

The government wouldn't listen

It was a very drastic art piece where I piled up 200 intact bloody reindeer heads outside of the courthouse in Tana with a Norwegian flag on top of it and my aim with that work was to get attention and from thereon to start telling our story from our own perspective and activate debate and fill these information gaps in society and media

I just felt a great need to have a critical debate about what was going on in the Norwegian legislation and politics towards Sámi reindeer husbandry especially with an open reflection about land policies like how they are carrying out both massive industries in our grazing lands but simultaneously slaughtering down our reindeer herds by presenting it as a protection for the very same lands

My work here at Tate is called Goavve-Geabbil

I'm trying to invite you into a different way of knowledge and different way of being on this world as opposed to the modern Western philosophical and rational perspective

We are in the Turbine Hall and that already represents one kind of energy that's also talking very loudly to what's happening back home with this green shift that we are currently experiencing where all kinds of extraction is pushed very much forward

The structure at the Turbine Hall is about energy but many different kinds of energies

From the Sámi perspective energy is something that is present in everything in lands, in stones in waters, humans and animals

The way I work with materials is they often bring energy and spirit of this animal or place along to the work

The Goavve- is sort of these layers that I made of reindeer hides that are woven in between these power cables

The power cables are a nod to the fact that we have this green colonial wave upon us where they are using the climate crisis as an argument to accelerate different kind of extractions for minerals or for sourcing wind power and it's difficult to defend yourself when the arguments are the future global life

The term goavvi describes locked pastures and goavvi is a result of the climate situations nowadays in a region where we used to have very stable and cold winters now we have warm and wet winters and very dramatic fluctuations in temperature so that creates these layers of ice from the ground  and that makes it impossible for the animals to dig through to get access to the food on the ground

It's a lived reality of the ecological crisis from my home perspective but it's also a reflection, I think of the ecological extreme situations that are unfolding differently across the globe

The other structure is called -Geabbil and that's a North Sámi term that's describing a way of being adaptable or flexible

It's a cross section of the reindeer nose and I made it into this very physically large structure that's almost functioning as a maze

There was a a group of scientists who were studying energy efficiency they found out that the reindeer nose was particularly intelligent it was able to heat up very cold air up to 80 degrees Celsius within one second which is incredible to even think about

You can look at this -Geabbil maze as a journey into natural science and intelligence and into Indigenous science and philosophy

You become so small in this context that you are no longer superior or dominant or bigger or more important, you can actually get lost within this animal's little nose

Maybe that opens a bigger set of senses in you in your body and spirit

Maybe it's just important for us to feel that humbleness in our meeting and in our relationship with nature and other life forms

It is very much challenging the concept of  the human kind being superior

I've tried to make a very welcoming atmosphere to welcome everyone to sit down and have this deep listening time to listen to the recordings that I've done throughout many years now, talking to knowledge keepers and recording sounds and joiks and so forth

My Sámi philosophy has not been written down anywhere

I come from an oral culture where this artistic journey has really led me to look into the depth of different parts of this knowledge

If you're not aware of it you can pass a whole lifetime considering a story just a story, for the sake of entertainment but through this project I've really tried to dive into this seemingly everyday things and looking deeper into why do we do these things

What does it teach you for instance to ask for permission before you set up camp in a new place?

Is it necessarily about getting an answer or is it rather about your perception of yourself in this world, your consciousness, your presence in relationship to such a wide web of life forms, seen or unseen

I challenge the perception of viewing Indigenous science as something old and pre-modern but actually something very progressive and very valuable if we are indeed looking for new strategies for life on this planet

One cornerstone in Sámi thinking is also to live in a mindset of several generations we are grateful and aware of three generations behind us who have provided lands environments and living conditions for us to be here today and our responsibility is to think three generations ahead to make sure that they have the same possibilities and conditions after our life is done

I hope sincerely that -Geabbil will be a journey where you can find peace within the energies in these materials itself and that you allow yourself to really dive into an experiment of what does it mean to view the world completely differently than the Western modern perspective and what would that imply for you as a species on this Earth