I have always loved to read, all kinds of literature – but for the last ten years it has mostly been non-fictional books, and I have felt I kind of had to relearn reading fictional books. I went to the library some days ago with my eldest daughter to pick up a non fictional book, (she always encourage me to find a fictional book) and I fell over this book below, it kind of said – pick me up, and immediately when I started reading it I had this familiar feeling, the language reminded me of something – being from several cultures, but also about oppression.

The author is writing about the Sami people in Norway, their identity and intergenerational traumas and Norways historical assimilation policies, told through Marie a freelance journalist living in France returning to Finmark, Norway.

It is a book about what it is to be a Sami, a women, mother, daughter and granddaughter. But it is also about Sami culture, language and identity, about oppression, discrimination and bigotry towards one of Europes major indigenous people.

There will always be, one way or another, experiences with victims and perpetrators and all the issues following around it. Many places in the world people feel oppression, indigenous or not. Its a difficult experience having as a human being, going through, witnessing, understanding and growing from, because not being treated fair and equal can be done so subtle, but also very direct without any explanation or consequences. Perhaps you will move on from your experiences but you will probably not forget.

I have thought about it for many years myself, being a woman, indigenous, growing up in my other country where I have been labeled, being mocked so badly, later told not being enough indigenous from my fellow inuit people, topped with my own family history. There has been something to work with.

We can be put in roles, identities and norms by society, so we fit in, its not necessary how we feel inside, but convenient by our surroundings to label us, you are this and that. Convenient because humans can be very lazy and looking for security and narratives, living in narrow environments where you are not exposed to different ways of being and living..

Dealing with other people having a specific view on you, peoples lack of knowledge, their obvious need for you to fill up their inner curiosity space, but still not meeting you openly can be a huge weight you have not chosen.

You will always feel what kind of space you are met from, is it a set of narratives, systems, rules, security, someone creating order or openness or are you being met from the same openness as nature, pure, direct, raw, like a movement, texture, silence and feeling it in your heart…

It´s an experience we all have, its an experience we have with others, you are nothing before someone view and label you a specific way, before they do we are just us…neutral, nothing…

Our inner work is to ask ourself what we are choosing to focus on, which fights or struggles do we engage in, how long do we want to dwell in certain experiences, how do we move on, freeing ourself or integrating the experience, the story, the label, the victimhood, understanding the secondary benefit of staying in victimhood, learning to grow from specific cages and prisons, understanding that this is about wanting to be seen – by the world, by yourself…

Being open and curious (not for ones own sake) that’s a huge gift you can offer other people, meeting other people neutral, without views and stories…how open can we be, its very much about being in the present moment, meeting another human being without the past, the conditioning, a role, meeting another being from our heart…

Photo of Kathrine Nedrefjord from her homepage

Im only on quarter in to the book, so I will lay down in my kitchen sofa and read some more…

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