What are the struggles of Indigenous people today? What happens when international borders are drawn on water in Indigenous lands? This episode addresses the dynamics in the Sápmi, the transboundary Sami homelands. Our guest, Rauna Kuokkanen, discusses the Deatnu Agreements on the Finnish–Norwegian border. In 1751, the Deatnu River was made to be a borderline on a map. During the past decades, border agreements have increasingly sought to control fishing in the river, thus, affecting Sami traditions, and rights to exercise them. This gave rise to Ellos Deatnu!-activist initiative that opposes the current fishing regulations while demanding Sami self-determination over the natural resources. In addition, the episode dives deep in the emergence of Indigenous studies, the effects of climate change in the Indigenous Arctic and Nordic settler colonialism. It also covers the situation in Greenland as an emerging critical edge of current geopolitics. Join us for this captivating episode hosted by Vadim Romashov and Hanna Laako.
Rauna Kuokkanen (Fierranjot Kirstte Rávdná) is a research professor of Arctic Indigenous politics at the University of Lapland and an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. She is from Ohcejohka, Sápmi. Her research delves into comparative Indigenous politics and law, Indigenous feminism and gender, Sámi governance, and settler colonialism in the Nordic countries. She is a member of the Standing Committee on Indigenous Involvement of the International Arctic Science Committee and editor of Settler Colonial Studies. Rauna is the author of the books Reshaping the University and Restructuring Relations.
Date of recording: 4 April 2025
