Remembering ČSV – Saami nationalists or Saami political entrepreneurs

Abstract

ČSV was a renowned idea in the Saami politics of the early 1970s, and soon became a set phrase, a movement. It began to attract Saami from the younger generation, who showed a keen interest in Saami affairs. I have looked into how and when the ČSV appeared. The main objective of my research is to find out how it became a slogan and what effect it had. The aim of my article is to compile information and knowledge on a central phenomenon in the Saami’s cultural and political struggle of the time. My theoretical base for understanding movements of this kind is collective action, acquisition by the participants of a common identity. I conduct qualitative research by collecting information both from written sources and interviews. Informants are chosen strategically.

ČSV appeared in the autumn of 1970, during the course of a Saami-political event in Máze, Norway, and the notion existed as a Saami-political slogan for some years thereafter. In the autumn of 1972, it also became linked to Saami literature, and from then on, ČSV continued as a two-pronged movement. It attracted the young, interested in Saami politics as well as artists and persons engaged in Saami culture, functioning as a process of awakening and of the formation of a common identity.

ČSV was an active, independent and self-determining body of Saami civil society between Saami organizations and institutions. ČSV established a dialogue between those on the i-net, making discussion of Saami affairs accessible. Though the ČSV had been born in the North-Saami regions, the movement also spread to Saami areas in the east and the south.

ČSV enhanced «Saaminess» in the public sphere, in meetings, conferences, festivals and newspaper articles. However, the mutuality of collective action within the Saami nation has not been maintained at the level it attained during the 1970s, and nation-building has, therefore, also come to standstill. Those developments have, in the new millennium, been replaced by discussion of the Saami parliaments, the authorities and of Acts and statutes. The new reality of Saami political life created by ČSV ought to be an appropriate subject for Saami research.