‘Shared Remembering’ as a Relational Indigenous Method in Conceptualization of Sámi Women’s Leadership

Abstract

This chapter looks at Sámi women’s leadership and what contributed to its success. Inspired by Indigenous methodologies worldwide and Sámi orality, we have developed a method of muittašit ovttas ‘shared remembering’, for gathering information and conceptualizing Sámi women’s leaderships. This method allows us to conceive and reason in a systematic manner, as well as to interpret the lived experiences and strategic choices of female leaders. Secondly, we scrutinized and structured our research material drawing from the symbolism represented in a solju ‘round breastpin’: its interconnected Circle of values and the Circle of actions. It worked both as a method and theoretical tool for our analysis. The presentation and analysis of our research material follows the structure of the circles of solju. In this chapter, we describe and operational-ize these methods in a practice, bringing to the forefront the considerations about strategies, values, and actions of Sámi leadership from a Sámi perspective and by means of Sámi concepts. It opens up a space for further scholarly and public discussions about both Indigenous women’s leadership and the design of research methodologies from an Indigenous perspective. The proposed research methodology can be applied to other projects in Sámi research, but it can also inspire Indigenous research in other contexts.