To Form A Living Bridge

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To Form A Living Bridge

Florencia Colombo

Title	To Form A Living Bridge
Subtitle	Cultural Heritage and Knowledge Transmission in the Restitution of the Sámi Collection in Finland
Author	Florencia Colombo
Date	2025
Description	Florencia Colombo’s master’s thesis examines the restitution of the Sámi collection from the National Museum of Finland to the Sámi Museum Siida, a process that unfolded between 2017 and 2021. Several political, cultural, and historical factors led to this decision. Notably, a 2012 report by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture emphasised restitution as a measure supporting Sámi cultural self-determination. Finland, situated within a dual historical trajectory as both a former colony of Sweden and Russia and as a colonising force in Sápmi (the region traditionally inhabited by the Sámi people) exemplifies the entangled nature of colonial legacies within Europe. In her master’s thesis, Colombo interrogates the colonial legacies embedded in museological structures and the paradoxes of representing Indigenous cultures within state-governed memory institutions. Her inquiries into the restitution process reveal the contours of an inter-European colonial framework as well as the epistemic and political discourses historically imposed onto Sámi communities. Situated within the field of critical cultural heritage studies, the study asks how migrating cultural heritage between two national museum paradigms reflects and reshapes debates on governance, identity, and autonomy in a transnational Sápmi. The study traces how the collection’s transfer has catalyzed a process of Indigenisation – referred to as Sámification – through an ongoing reconfiguration of museological structures and practices based on Sámi worldviews and vernacular knowledge systems. This process unfolds within the layered paradoxes of Sápmi as a cultural landscape with overlapping interpretations and tensions between national territories and national identities. Colombo shows that, within this context, the Sámi Museum Siida functions as a mediating institution between community-based epistemologies and broader national frameworks. The museum therefore embodies the potential for cultural empowerment and its susceptibility to institutional control, reflecting the complex interplay between Indigenous agency and state structures in contemporary heritage politics.
Institutional affiliation	Master Art Education - Curatorial Studies (DKV_FAE_MAE_VCS.alle)
Study path	Master

To Form A Living Bridge

Florencia Colombo

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