With a focus on Sápmi – the transcultural and transnational homeland of the Sámi people – this book presents case studies and theoretical frameworks which explore the ways in which memory institutions such as museums, archives, and festivals participate in and guide processes of appropriation, decolonization, and memory-making. The destruction and concealment of Sámi objects in both private and museum collections worldwide have impacted Sámi knowledge systems, disrupting local ways of knowing. Appreciation and reappropriation are important acts of decolonization which seek to create openings for reconnection to traditions, languages, and practices that were forcibly suppressed in the past. Western memory institutions such as museums, archives, and galleries have had a great impact on how heritage has been collected, stored, conserved, and organized within closed walls and glass cases. As the new museology movement developed in the 1990s, numerous examples revealed how difficult it became for researchers and public alike to access heritage. Considering the proliferation of cultural interventions and the growth of Sámi mobilization, which calls into question assumptions about how best to activate and experience Sámi cultural heritage and what constitutes appropriate stewardship, this book sheds light on initiatives to return artefacts to the Sámi community. With particular attention to the ways in which Sámi self-determination and the shifting boundaries between Indigenous and settler identities are articulated, challenged, and renegotiated, it draws on approaches from critical museology and Indigenous methodologies to explore the initiation, experience, and operationalizing of restitution projects. This book will therefore appeal to scholars of cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, and museum and heritage studies, as well as to those interested in questions of repatriation, restitution, and healing processes.

This open access book is a novel contribution in two ways: It is a multi-disciplinary examination of the indigenous South Saami people in Fennoscandia, a social and cultural group that often is overlooked as it is a minority within the Saami minority. Based on both historical material such as archaeological evidence, 20th century newspapers, and postcard motives as well as current sources such as ongoing land-right trials and recent works of historiography, the articles highlight the culture and living conditions of this indigenous group, mapping the negotiations of different identities through the interaction of Saami and non-Saami people through the ages. By illuminating this under-researched field, the volume also enriches the more general debate on global indigenous history, and sheds light on the construction of a Scandinavian identity and the limits of the welfare state and the myth of heterogeneity and equality.

This edited book brings together best examples and practices of digital and interactive approaches and platforms from a number of projects based in European countries to foster social inclusion and participation in heritage and culture. It engages with ongoing debates on the role of culture and heritage in contemporary society relating to inclusion and exclusion, openness, access, and bottom-up participation. The contributions address key themes such as the engagement of marginalised communities, the opening of debates and new interpretations around socially and historically contested heritages, and the way in which digital technologies may foster more inclusive cultural heritage practices. They will also showcase examples of work that can inspire reflection, further research, and also practice for readers such as practice-focused researchers in both HCI and design. Indeed, as well as consolidating the achievements of researchers, the contributions also represent concrete approaches to digital heritage innovation for social inclusion purposes. The book’s primary audience is academics, researchers, and students in the fields of cultural heritage, digital heritage, human-computer interaction, digital humanities, and digital media, as well as practitioners in the cultural sector.

This book includes twenty case studies of World Heritage sites from around the world that explore, from a human rights perspective, indigenous peoples' experiences with World Heritage sites and with the processes of the World Heritage Convention. The book will serve as a resource for indigenous peoples, World Heritage site managers, and UNESCO, as well as academics, and it will contribute to discussions about what changes or actions are needed to ensure that World Heritage sites can play a consistently positive role for indigenous peoples, in line with the spirit of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

This interdisciplinary volume explores the role of culture in single-industry communities facing the loss of their major industry. In a series of innovative case studies extending from New Zealand and Slovenia to the contemporary Nordic and Baltic States, the contributors address a wide range of topical issues. These include the role of the community’s past as a marker of its newly reconstructed identity and the importance of local traditions, landscapes, and place-related memories in post-industrial communities formerly dependent on one single employer or industry. The empirical case studies emphasise the role of cultural memory and local identity as communal strategies of survival and perseverance in such places and provide fresh perspectives into this turn to culture. The four parts of the book address such topics as the symbolic governance of change, tradition as capital, narratives as collective memories, and post-Soviet transition in comparative perspective. The team of international contributors hails from Australia, Estonia, Finland, Germany, and Slovenia and represents the fields of sociology, cultural policy, cultural history, landscape studies, and geography.

Future Memory Work addresses a crucial challenge in contemporary pluralistic societies: the organisation of open, participatory and socially inclusive memory practices in digital media ecologies. It brings a novel relational approach to future memory work across institutions, people, and modalities. Advancing inter- and transdisciplinary research and rich empirical cases from across Europe and beyond, the book examines how memory practices in digital media are open for engagement of people with diverse backgrounds. It analyses the modalities of memory making and how they can enable institutional and public memory making with a broad spectrum of people and groups in civil society at local, translocal, national and global levels. The chapters examine the mediatized character of memory making, whilst also critically considering what obstacles and potentials emerge from participatory memory work. As a whole, the book is a comprehensive source of knowledge and ideas for creating socially inclusive, sustainable memory practices and futures. It sets the multidisciplinary research agenda for advancing studies of heritage in contemporary digital media as an element and a driver of cultural and social change. Future Memory Work is essential reading for academics, students and professionals working in the fields of Anthropology, Museum Studies, Digital Cultural Heritage, Memory Studies, Cultural Studies and Design.