A biography of an indigenous person can be interpreted as a tangible history of colonialism. An example of this can be seen in the life and artistry of Hilde Skancke Pedersen, a Sámi Norwegian female artist born in 1953 in Hammerfest. I think it is important to make a disclaimer to our readers that indigenous thinking is a prerequisite to our conversation. When I use the pronoun “you”, I don’t only address Hilde personally but interpersonally, through Sámi understanding of the world and politics inhabited by her practice. When I myself use the pronoun “we”, I refer to the Volga Tatar worldview I belong to, creating a dialogue between two concrete perspectives which meet each other through the thorns of geopolitical will.

Yaniya Mikhalina: I would like to start with a question that revolves around time. Throughout your career, you’ve witnessed very different Norways. How did these transitions in economic, cultural, political, and indigenous environments influence your artistic becoming over the years, alongside your own history from childhood and adolescence to maturity and ageing?

Hilde Skancke Pedersen: I was born eight years after the end of World War II. The Nazis had burnt down everything in Finnmark and Northern Troms counties, using scorched-earth tactics. Inhabitants of these counties became internal refugees in other parts of Norway. Within the refugee communities there was a strong urge to return home and commence the resurrections of towns and villages. On their return after the war people hastily built barracks: a school barrack, a hospital barrack, a cinema barrack, and accommodation barracks. For the first years of my life, my parents and I lived in a barrack built for several families. I was born into the early years of the long period now known as “the deep peace”.

Hammerfest was a working-class town with a big fishing factory that pretty much supported the whole town. Both my mother and father worked there; my father as a secretary, and my mother as a factory nurse. In my community it wasn’t very natural to dream of being an artist. We got to see a theatre performance once a year, rare art exhibitions in the basement of the Catholic church, with artwork that left a strong and lasting impression in my imagination. I also was in the audience at amateur culture events such as concerts, plays, and talks, or when Folkeuniversitetet ¹ arranged meetings with professional musicians and writers, but most of all I wanted to stay at home to draw and write. I was a withdrawn child and youth, writing a diary all the time, pouring out thoughts that showed my despair about my low self-esteem and my vulnerability.

Drawing and writing went hand-in-hand. We didn't have any trained art teachers at school; the gym teacher had to give art classes. I remember being very frustrated looking at the white paper, knowing that I didn't have the skills to achieve what I wanted. But I continued to study to develop new skills, took classes from a local amateur artist, taught myself to sew, and spent a year at a preparatory art and craft school. At the age of 21 I was accepted to the National College of Art and Design ². Later, I studied creative writing at the Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø. I realised my dream of working in the theatre and creating costumes and scenography, while my wish to work totally free of context developed. Stage work with fringe groups is a tough but important education, having to fix everything yourself. I worked for several decades living hand-to-mouth but kept on creating stage design, publishing and exhibiting on a small scale.

YM: In what ways did the unique natural environment of Northern Norway leave a mark on your perception of the world during these formative years?

HSP: Nature meant a lot to me; I drew comfort from it and felt at one with it. We lived by the sea, an intense experience so far north — to be exposed to the elements and the changing seasons with polar darkness and midnight sun. Nature took centre stage for me at a time when few other stimuli were to be found. Radio, newspapers, library books, and occasional visits to the cinema — that was it. Now people are being totally overwhelmed by impressions all the time. I feel that it was a gift not being infested with this avalanche of sound and vision. Our immediate surroundings were important for me and my friends, paired with a deep interest in history and world politics, and spiced with curiosity for the popular culture of the late ’50s, the ’60s, and ’70s. It was then that I found my political point of view — to the left. I always knew that I was of Sámi descent, but the coastal areas were harshly “de-Sámified” by the Norwegian government, and most of the Sámi culture was erased.

YM: Reflecting on your extensive career journey, how has your labour-demanding background in costume design, textile work, set design, and scenography shaped and influenced your artistic sensibilities?

HSP: It has taught me to work on a big scale and with a variety of materials, and I would not be without those experiences. I worked many years in the theatre, and in film and TV productions, before I dared to take the step towards being more of an independent visual artist, and a playwright and poet.

In the North, my art has been known to some extent because of my work for TV and the stage, and due to the public artwork for the Sámi parliament in Norway (2000). After years in relative obscurity, I got a sort of a breakthrough in 2019, just as I received my pension. Getting more exhibition invitations and work possibilities has been a big joy and has left me with a lasting feeling of astonishment.

Now, in my early 70s, I must keep on working like crazy and try to achieve some sort of balance in my life. I am happy to get to work with skilled assistants from time to time.

YM: What cycles of time are you working with? Given your dedication to slow labour, how long does it take for you to make a project?

HSP: When I made the artwork for the Sámi parliament ³, it took me two to three years including the competition [the open call for the public artwork]. It was not sustainable financially. Luckily, I was brought up in a very sparse way of living, but my upbringing also was rich in love and enjoyment. I chose to continue this lifestyle out of need, but also because I wish to live in a way that doesn't leave a big imprint on the planet.

I have now worked for two years on the commissioned work for the new hospital in Hammerfest. I feel that all the artistic skills, artisanship, care, and concentration put into the slow processes will come through in the finished work.

I work a lot with used materials and textiles. I often use worn and torn remnants of traditional Sámi rugs in my practice. These woven textiles are an important inheritance in Sámi culture, while being a live tradition as an important craft today. I wish to honour all the labour that has been executed by mostly women who collected the plants and dyed, spun, and wove the wool into beautiful and useful indigenous products. These textiles were — and still are — used by nomad Sámi to keep warm.

YM: On what forms do you find it important to work alone, and when do you actively seek collectivity?

HSP: Now, I am in the last days of completing the commissioned work for the hospital in Hammerfest ⁴. In the beginning I decided that I would do everything myself because of the low budget, but after working for a year on my own, I realised that I needed assistance to finish the work in time. So there often are pragmatic reasons for when I work alone or not. I appreciate cooperating with other artists and curators on projects, and I’m available for discussions with colleagues about their projects.

Juniutstillingen 2024, the summer exhibition, in Oslo-based gallery Kunstnerforbundet featured a work, Burns, which I made together with Gerlinde Thiessen, herself a gifted artisan. She found the remnants of a traditional Sámi textile destroyed by fire. Together, we work on somehow healing this damaged beauty, giving it a new lease of life.

YM: You work with broken, forgotten, found, and thrown materials that relate to Sámi physical and immaterial history past and present. How do you relate to the question of passing on knowledge about trauma, violence, and healing through your work?

HSP: I find it important to work with these themes, as long as the abuse against Sápmi ⁵ and other indigenous cultures continues. I work a lot with textile, and think of my work as a kind of soft activism. I know that my work can be very subtle, it often speaks in a low voice. But my work can also shout out in pain or sing from joie de vivre. At the same time, it’s very open to interpretation; I don’t own the interpretation of my work. People say to me sometimes that they don't understand art. But do you say that you don't understand a mountain, lake, bird, or cloud? Nature, like art, is just there.

Healing naturally follows injury. As a guest curator for Textile Culture Net ⁶ I recently presented the Norwegian artist Mari Meen Halsøy. She lived for a time in Beirut, and made a strong project of “repairing” the bullet holes in the walls of the city by weaving and replacing patches of walls. The artist turned the effect the aftermath of war had on her into art. The facts of the oppression and the wounds inflicted on human beings and buildings created in her a need to make a stunning and moving art project called Wounds.

YM: I think what is so striking about your work is your use of abstraction and abstracted trauma. Not everyone has immediate access to it. It’s very important politically, requires a certain regime of looking, listening, and understanding that trauma is not a monolithic space. But sometimes trauma gives so much weight that you kind of feel helpless in front of it, so it's not even possible to suture…

HSP: I know how it feels. It's such a gridlock situation. But sometimes you can't give it up either. For example, right now, in the process of our conversation, at a café by Stortinget, the parliament building in Norway, we witness people demonstrating for Ukraine, for Palestine, and I consider these manifestations an important part of democracy.

There's a lot of activism going on for Sápmi to be protected. The politics all over Europe, and many other parts of the world, is turning so much to the right. For Norwegian political structures, it’s all about capitalisation. There is a huge pressure on all indigenous peoples for the natural resources on their land. In the Sámi way of thinking, human beings are nature. We are not living in nature, we are nature. As well as the reindeer, with their free spirits. They have a right to go and eat wherever they want. But the government allows ever more windmill parks, mines, and other interventions in reindeer pasture areas. There are strong forces complaining about Sámi presence with reindeer pastures and other inherited Sámi rights. In a way, land is everything. You must have a place to exist. Native peoples have been treated terribly badly all over the world, and the same struggle against oppressors continues.

YM: I find it very important for indigenous artists and artists in general to work across the nation-state borders. Then we could find each other not exclusively along the lines of Russians and Norwegians but also Tatars and Sámi. A world map is always following the nation-state lines, they are anachronistic and not natural, they don't come from the land, and we can build other connections, and instead of working globally, aspire to work translocally and translinguistically. In my PhD in artistic research from Trondheim Art Academy, I’m working on a question of indigenous mental health from the perspective of Tatar knowledge, and it was so incredible to learn about the pilot project in St. Olavs hospital by SANKS — Samisk nasjonal kompetansetjeneste — psykisk helsevern og rus (Sámi Norwegian National Advisory Unit on Mental Health and Substance Abuse), to have Sámi psychiatric nurses. Can you please say more about the new KORO project Hearki that you are about to start in collaboration with SANKS?

HSP: Since time immemorial, the Sámi have been looked down upon. While we have been exotified, our gravesites have been robbed by scientists, our skulls have been measured as living "specimens" of our people, our pasturelands have been built on by strangers. Mines, shooting fields, deforestation, windmill parks, railway tracks, and roads have occupied and destroyed huge areas of our land. Today, we and our reindeer are strongly disliked in towns and villages built on pastureland. Sámi individuals wearing our traditional clothing are either exotified as the Other, or stand in danger of being verbally or physically abused. The aim of the art project is to shine a spotlight on structural abuse from society at large towards Sámi society and culture, and violence and abuse within Sámi communities. I hope that art can help convey the results of the research to open conversations between people, and that a debate arises. For instance, the artwork Burns provoked strong emotions in the spectators, and their wish to discuss the work and its content.

Another purpose is to give an opportunity for those who do not dare to talk, to lend their words and stories to others who can present this material on their behalf, and at best give them courage to find a way out of shame and concealment.

Visual artistic expression can open up communication about vulnerable and sensitive topics and can at best be comforting and reduce the pain after traumatic experiences. Art has an ability to provide a language for feelings and phenomena that exist beyond words. Unfortunately, the problem that the project deals with seems to be eternally relevant.

Many interesting people are contacting me now. There is a Kurdish-Norwegian artist, Kwestan Jamal Bawan, who lives on the west coast of Norway. We will have a public conversation about our work and compare the situations of our peoples at an event hosted by Sámi Dáiddaguovddáš – the Sámi Centre for Contemporary Art in Karasjok. Both the Sámi and the Kurdish people are seen as Indigenous peoples, and face many of the same challenges as peoples spread over four countries.

YM: In a russian context,⁷ I think a lot about the role of assimilation. It's scary to see how many Indigenous people were unable to remember, to pass further the traditions, language, culture — only trauma, with hardly any means to overcome it. The acknowledgement of the reality of assimilation trauma is important to consider in mental health treatment. I really appreciate SANKS’ online course for persons pursuing a medical degree in Norway about Sámi worldview and the importance of integrating cultural differences into a medical picture, such as understanding silence (in the Sámi culture), which is completely different from Norwegian culture where it can mean consent. It is important to mention, as it directly addresses the shockingly high suicide rate among Sámi ⁸ . Unfortunately, it’s a frequent feature of indigenous communities across the world.

In the nation-state framework, the idea of a medical treatment we have learned to perceive as neutral and the default belongs to the very specific Western tradition which, in its very structure, refuses the equal coexistence of other worlds, leaving them behind institutional walls as non-essential. In this mise-en-scène, making public art from an indigenous perspective disrupts the accepted divisions, carving a door for those whose existence, let alone wounds, is forcefully disconnected from their roots.

HSP: For a very long time, the sea-Sámi culture has been silenced, with people living in the quiet so as not to provoke racism. In the times of the policy of Norwegianisation of the Sámi, being seen as inferior to Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, and Russian populations, we were forced into an existence of loss of identity, and a deep feeling of shame. Children grew up without a possibility to learn Sámi at school, and people who could speak Sámi were very silent about it. Some novels have been published and films released concerning the dismantling of reindeer husbandry by strict regulations from the government, about how much work, energy, and courage it takes to continue with that kind of work. The individuals who cannot resist the pressure to quit the business face a future of regrets and wants. In this industry you often must have another job on the side. Women especially must work elsewhere, and the men work in the industry, sometimes losing their hope for the future. The condition of the industry is worse on the Swedish side, even worse in Finland, and terrible in russia. The respect for traditional ways of living, and the right to pursue this way of life, is under attack.

YM: It made me think about Joar Nango’s work A House for All Cosmologies on the roof terrace of the Norwegian National Museum, inspired by traditional Sámi goahti⁹, which works as a gesture of destabilisation of this super expensive architecture, and a constant reminder of another relationship to the same territory. In Hearki, you’ve chosen to work with temporary works and processes as a strategy.

HSP: It will be a travelling exhibition that can take place on different public premises and for different target groups. The Hearki project points to the possibility of a better future for the Sámi and other Indigenous peoples. I am now working on developing an artistic interpretation of the research project ‘Violence and abuse in Sámi society’ by SANKS. We will have access to the results of their research and their reports, and the thought is to have an open meeting and publish a book. I will also work with my own body as material. I’ve done that before: In my film EANA - Land, I placed a naked human being (myself) in the snow, commenting that humans are at one with nature.

Some intruders allow themselves to occupy someone else’s space and pretend that there is nothing or nobody in this space, but the space is never empty if one treats life in a cosmological way. For Hearki, I have taken some photographs of myself when I have been hurt, in a car crash and from falling. These pictures can be translated into any kind of happening. It’s a long-term engagement, and I am working on it with a musician from Karasjok, Halvdan Nedrejord, the same artist who made the soundscape for the film.

YM: I think the format suits the purpose of the project very much — to share and to create a space. Working within an emotional space space in particular, which we don’t always take care of — or can’t take care of, for various reasons — requires reworking the concept of “public art” itself, not only as a thing that stands there, but something that’s changing by its nature. In connection with it, how would you define public art from a Sámi perspective?

HSP: I don't think of it as exclusively Sámi, it’s a transparent category of sorts. People who at first dislike or are indifferent to a public artwork often grow to take it into their perspectives and get a kind of ownership to it. There's been a lot of discussions about public art not just in Norway but everywhere. The work of art is at best being inspired by the identity of communities, and hopefully returns something of value to the inhabitants.

Recently I’ve been part of the outdoor exhibition for the 10-year anniversary of Dáiddadállu artist network in Kautokeino, where I live. Kautokeino seems to be the inspiration for many Sámi communities, and a bastion of the real Sámi spirit. For some people, the traditional way of dressing is still in daily use. I made a site-specific outdoor installation with the portraits of seven Sámi women whom I have met on the streets. They feel so safe and free within their identity, and mix their traditional dress and cap with for instance sneakers and high-vis vests without hesitation. They show an inspiring strength, humour, and zest for life. I've studied costume history, and Sámi dress is one of the last examples of ancient clothing still in use. These garments are cut like the clothes found in graves from thousands of years ago, and the tradition is vibrantly alive.

YM: The question of anger and reconciliation is often present in Indigenous art but sometimes it's approached quite formally. It’s a very big question to me: to learn how we can fertilise our anger and grief so that something will grow out of it. As an aftertaste from our conversation, I would like to end with the poem you wrote where these strong feelings are processed with originative energy:

We fight
with words, music and colours
We do not drown in thoughts of revenge
We toss our fury into the flames
cleanse our soul by the fire
We cool down in the wind
Derive strength from the mountains
pride from the peaks
mirth from the marshes
shelter in the slopes
humility in the valleys
endurance from the trees
movement from the rivers
rhythm from the ocean
calm from the tundra
warmth from the sun
And – we never back down!