Born With Attitude - Sami Rap

New yoik and music links:

Sami rap group BWA (Born With Attitude) now has two websites with mp3 tracks. On this site, click on any of the tracks under Låter (Songs.) On this site, tracks are all on main page.

A second link has been added for Niko Valkeapää and a second link for Wimme Saari, which is an audio file of his radio interview on NPR.

(photo: BWA, by Robin Mortensen)

Typical Sami

Last December, a crew from one of Norway’s most popular television series, Typisk Norsk (Typical Norwegian,) traveled to Minneapolis. The show is about the Norwegian language, and the crew was searching for Americans who have grown up speaking Norwegian dialects now extinct in Norway. Their first stop was Minneapolis, and they made their way to Ingebretsen’s, late on what happened to be annual Sami day. Siida folks Cari Mayo, Chris Pesklo, and Arden Johnson were still on hand and the crew was quite interested to discover Sami in America, and the resulting clips of the Siida did find their way into the very last episode the program will ever air.

This episode was broadcast 4/30/06, and is now available for viewing in the NRK archives. See the episode here
The program is one half hour long, and of course in Norwegian with no English subtitles. The Siida gang appears within the first ten minutes.
Photos - clips from the show: top left, Arden Johnson yoiks Cari Mayo; middle right, Cari Mayo and Chris Pesklo, bottom center, Arden Johnson and Typisk Norsk host Petter Schjerven

Sami yoik mp3 samples

Listen to yoik audio samples from many different regions of Sápmi in mp3 format here. Audio samples of many of the major Sami languages here.

These audio links are from the Encyclopaedia of Saami Culture website, which has moved so check the new link. The website is small excerpts from and information about The Saami: A Cultural Encyclopaedia, a 500 page book recently translated into English and published by the Finnish Literature Society. The encyclopedia is a project of the Saami Studies Work Group of the University of Helsinki, originally published in Finnish.

Look for a review and excerpt in the Summer Árran
Order the book from Finnish Literature Society

UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues

New on the organizations page of the Sami Culture Library

UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues Video. Includes opening of the first session, with remarks by Ole Henrik Magga and Kofi Annan.

The fifth session is currently underway, May 15-26 in New York, with a theme of "The Millennium Development Goals and indigenous peoples: Re-defining the Millennium Development Goals." Photo: Kofi Annan and Ole Henrik Magga.

Idjagiedas - New CD from Mari Boine

New from Mari Boine. Idjagiedas is the title of her new CD. She says “I’m always looking for expressions which are more than just words. It’s about giving yourself to it. The title means “in the hand of the night.” The lyrics are mostly written by Rauni Magga Lukkari, and perhaps the Sami language’s foremost poet today, Karen Anne Buljo. “My language is so minimal compared to the language of these ladies, and I want these nuances to work with,” says Boine. “This is a CD where the lyrics go into the spiritual, but a text like Buljo’s ‘Reindeer of Diamond’ feels contemporary considering what is happening in the northern areas. She wrote this a few years ago when an international mining company started digging for diamonds (in Sápmi) without permission. The song has sadness because of the inability to stop these powers.”

The interviewer asks, “You have been angry for many years. Has something grown that fights for the values you have fought for?” Mari replies, “Yes, there is much more pride now than before. The problem is lack of resources in the schools. Alaska and Canada have come much further with indigenous rights. I wish we in Norway wouldn’t have to beg anymore. Look at the oil drilling going on in the North – a percentage of that wealth should go to Sami culture.” Her next project is Nils Gaup’s film on the Guovdageainnu uprising. Her grandmother is from the Skum family, one of the families involved.

Mode Steinkjer
http://www.siste.no/underholdning/article2054633.ece