Red Cottage and Potato Field - Part I

 Yashika Subba*

Something about the Nordic dwellings, with their bright red cottages, appeals to me. According to the natives, there is an old saying in Finland that the concept of a good life is to have a "Red cottage and potato plants".  While I see parallels between Indigenous people in the Eastern Himalayas who live in a vastly different environment, they, too, believe in the simplicity of existence. In fact, on our field trip to Singalila National Park and the Indo-Nepal border, I saw many of people self-sufficient and, by modern standards, to have few requirements.

My journey to the Arctic Circle began in late May 2022. While it was still hot and humid in the tropical climate of India, it still felt like mid-winter in the Nordic. The prospect of a beautiful European road trip with farms and cottages along the way, the midnight sun on the arctic circle, the Aurora Borealis in the land of northern lights, and tundra region like which we read about in geography classes at school drove me to another world. This time it was my chance to explore them, but I never imagined representing my homeland in the Nordic would happen all at once. The landscape feels different, the food tastes different, yet the people feels connected.

This vast expanse of land is the ancestral home of the indigenous Sámi. In the Eastern Himalaya of Sikkim and Darjeeling, we have Tamang, Limbus, Lepcha, and Bhutia,etc in the Nordic area, we have Sámi. The Sámi are a Finno-Ugric-speaking people who live in the region of Sápmi, which now includes substantial areas of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. The Sámis have a rich cultural heritage. The Sámi have traditionally worked in a range of occupations, including coastal fishing, fur trapping, and sheep herding. Semi-nomadic reindeer herding is their most well-known source of income. Approximately 10% of the Sámi are still involved in reindeer herding, which supplies them with meat, fur, and transportation (Solbakk,2007). Reindeer herding is constitutionally restricted to Sámi in certain Nordic nations for traditional, environmental, cultural, and political reasons.

The delegation from partner universities visited institutions in Rovaniemi, including the Finnish Sámi Parliament in Inari (Finland), the Sámi SIIDA Museum, the Saami Education Institute, and the Norwegian Sámi parliament in Karasjok (Norway).

According to the Sámi Act, the Norwegian Constitution (1987) grants the Sámi people specific rights such as:

The Sámis shall have their own national Sámi Parliament elected by and amongst the Sámis.

The Norwegian Sámi Parliament's activities are determined by the Sámi people.

In Norway, the Sámi and Norwegian languages are equal.

Like many indigenous people of the world, the Sámis have historically suffered through various types of discrimination and repression. Whereas today Sámis have come a long way procuring certain provisions and a representation in larger platforms, I believe in the Eastern Himalaya we are far apart in securing minority voices; however, this academic visit has raised awareness of the indigenous perspectives of the Nordic region to the Eastern Himalaya and vice versa, encouraging us to learn and grow, and realising that no matter what profession we are in, we can always help promote social consciousness.

May we all build our Red Cottage and grow potato in the fields.

For more info: https://www.arcticcentre.org/news/Study-visit-to-the-Saami-Education-Institute-and-the-Sámi-Parliaments-in-Inari-and-Karasjok/wtyyacen/9e0ed58c-5f12-482f-b80c-f5640d2aeeda

https://www.arcticcentre.org/news/Finnish-India-joint-Seminar/wtyyacen/aeec8ee9-801f-4aa9-885b-854551c66e91

* The story is written by Yashika Subba – a student of Sikkim University, India – who participated in the Finnish-India mobility program organized by the Northern Institute for Environmental and Minority Law at the Arctic Centre of the University of Lapland. The story is first published in Yashika’s blog at: https://bichardharaa.blogspot.com/2022/06/red-cottage-and-potato-field.html#more