Boazoeallin – Reindeer Life: Exploring possibilities for decoloniality with community-based art education

This research focuses on the potential of using community-based art education within art-based action research in the context of decolonial thinking and acting. The research project is conducted with Sámi reindeer herder families, exploring and unfolding in their everyday lives. The context of the research reveals the contemporary socio-cultural terrain that is rapidly changing in the Arctic for multiple reasons. Various parties worldwide are exploring the still sparsely inhabited areas in the Arctic and how to utilise them to bring global resources and security worldwide. Globalisation, rapidly advancing technology, and social connections are changing the structure of society and people’s worldviews and daily needs in the North. These components strongly affect and change the lives and the future of the inhabitants of the North.

Sámi reindeer herders strive to maintain their rights and possibilities to practise the livelihood they have inherited in their families for centuries. Reindeer herding is an ancient livelihood, evoking romantic notions of old times. The reindeer herders want to renew the general conception of their work and daily lives. They want their livelihood and culture to be a fundamental part of the future of the contemporary Arctic. The art-based actions in this study seek to create the possibility for the reindeer herders to disseminate information about themselves on their terms and from their point of view. The research took place in the Finnish parts of Sápmi, the Sámi Indigenous homeland, which covers the northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula of Russia. Hence, the Sámi reindeer herders’ culture and Sámi background as a divided and colonised people are fundamental starting points for this research.

The research explores the possibilities for community-based art education to navigate in a multicultural context, empower the participants, and seek decolonising methods through community art. The research aims to explore the conditions and develop decolonising possibilities for community-based art education used in Indigenous and Arctic research. The objectives are to develop, clarify, and specify the community-based art education approach in co-research with participants to offer them a way to contribute to broader circles of society through creative work. Artbased action can lead to empowerment and decoloniality, as well as understanding and better cooperation with other regional stakeholders.

The main question of this research is: How can community-based art education foster Indigenous cultural sustainability in the multicultural Arctic?

The approach of art-based action research is a strategy that primarily involves art education methods. Art-based action research (ABAR) has been developed in the Department of Art Education at the University of Lapland in Finland since the 1990s, and has also produced new knowledge of multidisciplinary research, northern environmental circumstances, and Arctic and Indigenous cultural research. ABAR is participatory action research, collaboration, and co-research within community-based art education. The ABAR projects seek to propagate Sámi Indigenous culture and local people’s lives as an essential part of the northern region. The projects have promoted the multicultural North in art events and exhibitions. In this research I apply and develop the ABAR strategy in a project with Sámi reindeer herders.

The main theoretical concepts of this study are community art and communitybased art education. These concepts have led to the development of new genre Arctic art, which highlights art-based collaboration in the multicultural North. Decoloniality, also expressed as decolonial thinking and action, emerged from the Sámi background and culture of reindeer herder families, recognizing them as a colonised people. For some Indigenous people, decolonial thinking offers a new way to navigate their daily lives, as assimilation policies are deeply embedded in contemporary society and often accepted as the status quo. The concept of the pluriverse envisions a future where multiple cultures and ways of being coexist, including nature, emphasizing equality, harmony and interdependence.

This research gathered five Sámi reindeer herder families in the nearby regions of the Anárjávri, the Davvisámi (Northern Sámi) word for Lake Inari, in the northernmost Finnish part of Sápmi to produce and disseminate information about their livelihood and daily lives by creating community art. The reindeer herder families took photographs of their daily lives for one year to explore and reveal the moments and situations of a contemporary reindeer herder’s life. The aim was to unveil their livelihood from a different perspective and reveal the contemporary situation of a rare profession. The photographs formed the basis of an exhibition of installations of reindeer herders’ everyday life, called Boazoeallin, a Davvisámi word for Reindeer Life, first exhibited in Sámi Museum Siida in 2017. Inspired by the exhibition, the families continued the visual work and published a Boazoeallin book of their photographs in 2023. I have reflectively analysed the research material, which consists of over 1000 photographs, open interviews and several discussions with the families and my notes gathered in this process.

As a researcher, I have an insider-outsider position as I have been part of the reindeer herders’ community by marriage for a long time. Hence, the research also has an autoethnographic characteristic since I mirror and analyse my experiences with the participating families’ research material. My insider role has helped me, in my works as an art educator, to design and facilitate community-based art education actions, which necessitated giving specific attention to the circumstances of the reindeer herders’ work and the Sámi cultural background of the participating families.

This research includes four peer-reviewed articles published in scientific journals. The Boazoeallin exhibition is an artistic component of this dissertation. The articles analyse and explore community-based art education, community art, the Sámi Indigenous culture, the multicultural complex of Arctic Art and the questions of co-research and decolonial research actions. My main findings indicate that community-based art education requires both the sensitivity and the flexibility of the art educator-facilitator-researcher person. Sensitivity grew understanding and led me as a researcher to understand more significant complex circumstances in the reindeer herders’ daily lives.

The art-based action strategy, community-based art education, and community art together with Indigenous people can contribute to decoloniality. Democratic research with communities involving the participants as co-researchers and equal partners in creative actions requires cultural awareness. It is a question of balance and competence in listening to and understanding people, their cultures, and their traditions. The art-based actions unveil the participants’ culture and the special Indigenous knowledge they have developed over generations. The exploration and exposure of their knowledge in art, which is considered a Western and Eurocentric heritage, requires ethical consideration. Participatory actions, collaboration and coresearch are essential. My findings indicate how important it is that the researcher and facilitator know the community context and cultural knowledge of the participants well. My unique position as an insider in the participating community has, without doubt, brought particular depth to the research approach and the understanding of the context. The study has been a long-term project, which has been advantageous in giving a broader view of the research matter.

My findings indicate that community-based art education can be a helpful method in fostering decoloniality. Community-based art education connected the reindeer herder families to a creative, visual, contemporary art-based action that otherwise may not have occurred. Their visual presentations of their lives through an exhibition and a book brought to daylight a rare time frame of contemporary Arctic life, which made them appreciate and see their lives from a different angle.

The experiences, moments of their lives, Indigenous culture, and knowledge that the photographs show are recognised as valuable when seeking a shared sustainable future in a multicultural world. Acknowledging the Indigenous people’s existence and place-specific importance is continuously crucial to avoid further colonisation and exploitation of the Arctic. Community-based art education can form a dialogical platform for Indigenous cultural esteem and multicultural understanding in the Arctic of the future.