Giving a voice: 'Arctic Highways' features works from Sápmi and North America

The Sámi people of Scandinavia were robbed of their land, forced into boarding schools and forbidden to speak their Indigenous language.

Like Native Americans, many turned to art to heal these ancestral wounds.

Open at the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum of Contemporary Art through March 2, 2025, “Arctic Highways: Unbounded Indigenous People” features work by 12 Indigenous artists from Sápmi (the cultural region traditionally inhabited by the Sámi people) and North America. These artists tell the stories of Native people who live in different countries yet regard themselves as kindred spirits.

Giving a voice: 'Arctic Highways' features works from Sápmi and North America

“Arctic Highways” features photography, duodji (Sámi handcrafts), sculpture, fiber art and videos.

The artworks explore what it means to be free, pointing to the restrictions of political borders, often arbitrarily drawn without regard to landscapes used by the Sámi and North American Indigenous cultures for thousands of years.

The show has been co-curated by Indigenous artist Tomas Colbengtson (Sámi/Sweden) and artists from Norway, Finland, Alaska and Canada.

“I come from the Arctic Circle, on the border between Sweden and Norway,” Colbengtson said. “We’ve been struggling to get the recognition and get places to show our art.

“The thing that binds us together is our ancestral land,” he continued. “We have lost the right to it. It’s the need to give voice to those who don’t have a voice.”

In Sweden, the Indigenous Sámi were gradually forced to give up land, first to farmers starting in the 1650s and later to industries such as forestry and mining. By the late 1890s, the government confiscated their reindeer herding land. The Sámi use reindeer for food, clothing and transportation.

“We are still struggling to get it back,” Colbengtson said. “It’s like, ‘You can use the land, but it’s not yours.’”

In northern Canada, the artist Maureen Gruben’s photographs “Aidainnaqduanni, Morning” and “Aidainnaqduanni, Aurora” center polar bear skins in a frozen landscape commenting on land surveys for oil.

Aidainnaqduanni means “we are finally home” in Inuvialuktun. A Vancouver museum gave her the three vintage polar bear rugs. The artist paired them with industrial survey tripods recently salvaged from an abandoned 1980s oil camp. The work addresses tensions between land as home and land as finite industrial resource. Aidainnaqduanni also offers a concise glimpse into place — for much of the Arctic year, home is a dazzling layer, both harsh and fragile, between stars and ice.

“She’s scared that the nature where she lives will be spoiled by the oil industry,” Colbengtson said.

Colbengtson’s own “Giela dajvan,” a screen oil on aluminum, references Swedish residential schools.

“It’s more reflecting on something that is not talked about,” he said. “In Sweden, they don’t even know they’re Sámi people. That photo was taken in Alaska in the beginning of the 1900s.”

Meryl McMaster’s (Cree/Canada) print shows a traditionally-dressed woman looking back at the land.

“It’s about the land and borders,” Colbengtson said. “It’s about ourselves with the land. Even the Sámi take their surname from the mountains. It’s so closely connected to the landscape.

“We have 500 words for reindeer,” he added. “We have 250 words for snow.”

Finnish artist Marja Helander photographed her print “Waiting for the Morning” on aluminum. A naked woman sports a fluffy tail as she gazes back at the viewer.

“You can see the background, the open mine,” Colbengtson said. “They are excavating iron ore. I interpret it as, ‘You have to be as wise as a fox.’”

Máret Ánne Sara’s (Sámi/Norway) mixed-media digital collage “Crowned by Fate” (2019) references the ideals of the Statue of Liberty and the U.S. Constitution. The phrase “All men are created equal” really refers to white landowners, Colbengtson said.

“Eventually it will end up in a museum to be built in Sweden,” he continued. “It’s an historic wound. It’s difficult to talk about. The medium of art opens it up.”

Santa Fe is the exhibition’s last American stop before it returns to Norway.