Samar i R ros-traktene

The article explores whether marine biodiversity mappings can contribute to the mapping of the material basis of Sami culture. Four different mapping practices are analysed in the article, all related to the seascape in the Lyngen fjord (Lyngenfjorden) in northern Norway. Initiatives undertaken by the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries and the Institute of Marine Research (IMR) to map cod spawning grounds, and by the Sami Rights Commission (SRC) to map customary use of a fjord are compared with local fishing practices. Although the seascape was initially mapped to find spawning grounds (the IMR and the Directorate) and to record social practices (the Directorate and the SRC), the outcomes also express social relations between the mappers and the mapped materials. Whereas the mappings that included fishermen's relations with fishing grounds are compatible with each other, the marine scientists' mapping documented biodiversity independent of local relations with it. The author argues that the marine environment should be seen as expressing social relations between groups of people and certain materialities instead of as separated in natural and social layers. Thus, even though marine biodiversity mapping practices reveal biodiversity in Sami settlement areas, they inform little about the material basis of Sami culture.     

Keith R. Long (1957–2019)

Natural Resources Research -