Tracking Nature Inscribed: Nature in Rights and Bureaucratic Practice

Ween, Gro Birgit

doi:10.5324/njsts.v2i1.2134

NJSTS

2016

DOI: 10.5324/njsts.v2i1.2134

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Tracking Nature Inscribed: Nature in Rights and Bureaucratic Practice

Gro Birgit Ween¹

Abstract: Indigenous people live in places that

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Cited by 4 publications

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“…G. Ween Ween, 2014). Bureaucratic practices, too, are deceptively selective, and like maps, they produce landscapes "out of space and time" without the complexities of local life.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The map machine: Salmon, Sámi, sand eels, sand, water and reindeer. Resource extraction in the High North and collateral landscapes

Ween

2020

Polar Record

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As a collaborative production, the exhibition New Arctic aspired to explore postcolonial versions of the Arctic. For this purpose, the exhibition included, among others, an installation called a map machine, seeking to display the Arctic as a site of ongoing ontological politics. To our audiences, the map machine visualised how an inhabited Arctic continues to become a periphery, open to new resource exploitation, a Dreamland “out of space and time.” In this text, I mimic the work of this map machine by describing a series of outside interventions on the Varanger Peninsula, in the Sámi core areas of Norway. The case that initiates the set of actions described in this text is a proposed expansion of a quartzite mine in the small village of Austertana. I illustrate how maps and bureaucratic processes as working political technologies introduce new cartographic visions of this land–water interface, counteracting other existing versions of the same landscape. The case illustrates how exactly such new visions impose urgently meaningful single-action landscapes, or how the Tanafjord was literally reworked from a landscape of endangered species to a landscape defined by an issue of maritime security.

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“…G. Ween Ween, 2014). Bureaucratic practices, too, are deceptively selective, and like maps, they produce landscapes "out of space and time" without the complexities of local life.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The map machine: Salmon, Sámi, sand eels, sand, water and reindeer. Resource extraction in the High North and collateral landscapes

Ween

2020

Polar Record

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Assembling the Whale: Parliaments in the Politics of Nature

Asdal

Hobæk

2016

Science as Culture

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Mis/translation, Colonialism, and Environmental Conflict

Østmo

Law

2018

Environmental Humanities

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This article describes a colonial encounter in north Norway between Sámi practices for fishing and knowing the natural world, and the conservation policies of state policy makers. In Sámi practices the world is populated by powerful and morally lively human and nonhuman actors. In caring for the land and its lakes in practical ways it is important to sustain respectful relations with those actors. Norwegian environmental policy works differently by distinguishing between nature and culture and seeking to protect landscapes from what it takes to be human interference, so that natural forces can operate unimpeded. The article first explores these two different worldviews and shows how environmental policy imposes restrictions on fishing practices that make it difficult or impossible for Sámi fisherpeople to care for and sustain respectful relations with their lakes. It then reflects on the significance of translation and mistranslation for this encounter, noting that important environmentally relevant Sámi words translate poorly into Norwegian or English, and that the practices that these index are ignored or misunderstood in those translations. In particular, it focuses on the notion of jávredikšun, a key term for Sámi people who fish on inland lakes, and shows that the word indexes environmental actions and realities that translate only with difficulty into English. Finally, it considers the potential political and analytical significance of refusing translations of this and other important environmentally relevant indigenous words.

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Tracking Nature Inscribed: Nature in Rights and Bureaucratic Practice

Abstract: Indigenous people live in places that

Cited by 4 publications

References 7 publications

The map machine: Salmon, Sámi, sand eels, sand, water and reindeer. Resource extraction in the High North and collateral landscapes

The map machine: Salmon, Sámi, sand eels, sand, water and reindeer. Resource extraction in the High North and collateral landscapes

Assembling the Whale: Parliaments in the Politics of Nature

Mis/translation, Colonialism, and Environmental Conflict

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