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Sámi, Celebrities and Joik. Representing the Indigenous, Addressing the Majority in NRK Sápmi’s “Muitte Mu”

Representation
Broadcast
Television
Narratives

Abstract

Research on indigenous people often either focuses on how they are presented in media by the majority, non-indigenous people, or on how indigenous people present themselves. This other perspective involves counter-images and the indigenous media institutions want to tell their own stories on their own terms. NRK Sápmi is the Sámi indigenous division of Norway’s largest media company, NRK, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. NRK Sápmi’s main mission is to provide programming for the Sami people. The main obligation is to broadcast a wide range of programs and services that will maintain and strengthen the Sámi language, culture and identity. However, it is also a goal that the country’s general population acquire a greater knowledge of Sami and the Sami culture and society. In this paper, I use the program “Muitte Mu” (Remember me), produced by NRK Sápmi, as a case. Muitte Mu is a program where famous Norwegian musicians come to Sápmi and learn how to joik. Joik is a traditional Sámi form of song. I use research on representations and indigenous journalism and argue that the program shows how NRK Sápmi employs a majority perspective, including Sámi iconography, and that the channel, as many other television channels, use celebrities in order to attract the Norwegian non-indigenous population. However, to discuss whether a program produced by NRK Sápmi is sámi or not is in itself problematic if the researcher is not indigenous. Thus, in a reflexive process, I also problematize the insider/outsider perspective.