Rauni Äärelä-Vihriälä
(PhD in Education) is Associate Professor of Education at the Sámi University of Applied Sciences in Norway. She has also been working as a primary school teacher and Sámi language teacher for fifteen years in her home village of Sodankylä. The focus of her doctoral research was on the revitalization of the endangered Sámi language. The objective of this pioneer study was to provide a new perspective on Sámi language revitalization by analyzing the revitalization of Sámi language among children in one North Sámi language nest.
Hanna Guttorm
(PhD in Education) is widely interested in life and its possibilities on our planet. She is especially inspired by Indigenous ontologies and post theories, investigating how we should do and write research in order to make a change towards a more ecological, social and cultural sustainability and solidarity. She has revitalized the language of his father, North Sámi, and has worked as Associate Professor in Sámi Teacher Education at the Sámi University of Applied Sciences in Norway. Currently she works as senior researcher in Indigenous Studies at the University of Helsinki. Her current research on healing methodologies is funded by Kone foundation. In addition, she participates in multiple collaborative research projects concerning different Arctic Indigenous issues.
Lea Kantonen
(Doctor of Arts) is Professor of Artistic Research at the University of the Arts Helsinki’s Academy of Fine Arts and a researcher with the University of the Arts Helsinki’s ArtsEqual initiative. She is interested in artistic dialogue with people from different cultures, language domains, generations, and professions. Her other interests include translation as part of the artistic process. Lea Kantonen and her partner, Pekka Kantonen, have exhibited internationally in art museums and locally in community centres and village schools. They have facilitated multilingual performances and workshops on the different interpretations of knowledge. Exhibitions, screenings and other presentations provide feedback on the ongoing processes – a means of continuous methodological revision and conversation.
Pigga Keskitalo
(PhD in Education) is a researcher at the University of Lapland. She is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Helsinki. She is currently working as a part-time researcher at the Sámi University of Applied Sciences (SUAS). Formerly, she worked for 20 years at the Sámi teacher education program at SUAS. She is a member of the UArctic Thematic Network on Teacher Education for Social Justice. She has participated in various national and international research and development projects, and has supervised doctoral students in education sciences. She is a North Sámi-speaking Sámi scholar, coming from the Ohcejohka (Utsjoki) community and living today in Enontekiö, Peltovuoma village.
Ilona Kivinen
(PhD in Finno-Ugric studies) is a Sámi language teacher at the University of Helsinki. Her special interests are in Sámi languages and historical linguistics. She has published various articles on adjectives in Sámi and Finno-Ugric languages especially from the historical perspective, and her current research concerns the variation of the adjective attributive system in North Sámi. In addition she has been working in projects that develop the technical tools for proofreading and modernizing Sámi languages.
Britt Kramvig
is a Professor at the Department of Tourism and Northern Studies, UiT the Arctic University of Norway. Her current research projects encompass the ongoing politics and practice of reconciliation in Arctic communities, imaginaries of Arctic futures, and the ontological turn in social science and humanities studies. Another major interest is the specificity of (Arctic) creativity, nature-based tourism and sustainability and how these can inform the future of the planet. In 2015–2016 she was a fellow at CAS (the Centre for Advanced Studies) in the project “Domestication in the Era of the Anthropocene in the Arctic” led by Prof. M. Lien (UiO). From 2013–2016 she was Norwegian PI on the HERA-project: “Arctic Encounters: Contemporary Travel/Writing in the European High North.” During the period of 2016–2020, she has been a research partner at the Resource Extraction and Sustainable Arctic Communities led by Prof. Sverker Sörlin from KTH, Sweden and is a member in the Norwegian Scientific Academy for Polar research as well as a member of the Social Science and Humanity Committee IASC, The International Arctic Science Committee.
Petter Morottaja
has various roles in the Aanaar Saami (Inari Sámi) community: a university teacher, translator, writer, journalist and researcher. He has published two adventure novels in Aanaar Saami as a teenager and shorter texts in the magazine Anarâš. For him, writing in Aanaar Saami has meant making compromises on how to express thoughts that have emerged mainly in a Finnish-speaking environment in a language that seems to lack the vocabulary and the established style of popular culture. Nonetheless, he has seen these compromises not only as drawbacks but also an opportunity for creating something completely new in AS literature.
Eljas Niskanen
worked as Editor-in-Chief in the Čyeti čälled project in 2018 and took over the editing of the communal magazine Anarâš. He also edits belletristic texts and books. He is an L2 Saami speaker who has learnt Aanaar Saami during the Saami Education Institute’s study year 2012–2013. Due to his job as a journalist, he has become a key person in 2018 in activating people in writing. He is harsh with himself when he makes mistakes, and he spends much time in solving linguistic problems. Sometimes his texts flow easily, and sometimes he gets stuck, mainly because of complicated linguistic issues.
Ragnhild Lydia Nystad
was Vice-President of the Norwegian Sámi Parliament in 1997–2005. From 1995 to 1997 she served as parliamentary leader of the Norwegian Sámi National Association and in 1985–1991 she acted as the head of the Norwegian Sámi National Association, being its first female leader. During the same period, she established and led the Sámi Nursing Association. In the period 1986–1997, she was a member of the Sámi Council. Besides being a Sámi politician, she has acted in the art field, among others leading art school in Kárášjohka/Karasjok.
Torjer Olsen
(PhD in Religious Studies) is Professor in Indigenous Studies, The Centre for Sámi Studies, UiT The Arctic University of Norway. Research interests include Indigenous issues in education, gender and power in research methodologies, and Indigenous Christianities. Olsen is the project leader for the international research project “Indigenous Citizenship and Education”. In 2015/2016, he was a visiting scholar in Te Puna Wānanga (School of Māori and Pacific Education), University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand.
Marja-Liisa Olthuis
has a PhD in Saami languages and is the leader of the revitalization programs for Aanaar Saami. She started up the Čyeti čälled anarâškielân project, together with Erika Katjaana Sarivaara. She is a self-taught writer who learnt to write in Aanaar Saami during her studies at Oulu University, mainly from dictionaries and scarce texts. She started to write in Aanaar Saami in 2000 when a need arose to produce study materials. She has written five children’s books and keeps her own blog, Tejâblogi (http://tejablogi.blogspot.com/). Nowadays she writes fiction and poems as her hobby.
Hanna Outakoski
(PhD) is Senior Lecturer in North Sámi at Umeå University in northern Sweden and at UiT the Arctic University of Norway. Her research interests lie in the areas of Indigenous didactics and pedagogy, literacy, multilingual school writing, writing processes, Sámi linguistics, and e-learning in Indigenous higher education contexts. She is currently working on research methodologies that bring direct benefits to the Indigenous communities already during the field work period, and that can be expanded to community projects that are not dependent on researcher presence.
Attila Paksi
(PhD in Social Sciences) is a Global Development Studies scholar. His research interests include locally initiated community development approaches, the interplay of formal education and Indigenous ways of knowing, Indigenous research methodologies, and hunter gatherer studies. He is the European representative of the International Society of Ethnobiology (2016–2021) and an honorary member of the ICCA Consortium, the Global association for the territories of life.
Jelena Porsanger
(PhD) was former Director of the Nordic Sámi Institute and former Rector of Sámi allaskuvla/the Sámi University of Applied Sciences. She is a Skolt Sámi scholar with a doctorate in the history of religion and Indigenous research from the University of Tromsø, and has a Licentiate in philosophy from the University of Helsinki. She was previously Rector of the Sámi University of Applied Sciences and now works at Sámiid Vuorká-Dávvirat, the Sámi Museum in Kárášjohka (Karasjok), and is affiliated to the University of Helsinki Indigenous Studies Program. She is currently a member of the international Editorial Board of AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples and is actively involved in the Skolt Sámi scientific and artistic project aimed at creating an interactive database of Eastern Sámi cultural heritage and history, funded by the Kone Foundation.
Aili Pyhälä
(PhD) has extensive grassroots-level experience in more than twenty-five countries, immersing herself in, and engaging with, Indigenous peoples and local communities, along with their knowledge systems, beliefs and practices. With twenty years of experience evaluating international cooperation projects worldwide, and following the principles of permaculture, her current research looks at the ways in which the promotion and imposition of various forms of so-called ‘development’ programs affect local cultures, environments, knowledge systems, and overall wellbeing. She is also researching the nuances and universalities in cross-cultural perceptions of happiness. She currently sits in the Executive Committee of the ICCA Consortium and is a partner of the Centre of Indigenous Conservation and Development Alternatives (CICADA). Alongside her academic work, she is a committed activist defending territories of life and their defenders.
Rauna Rahko-Ravantti
(PhD) is an Associate Professor in the Sámi Teacher Education Program at the Sámi University of Applied Sciences, Norway. Her doctoral thesis in 2016 dealt with Sámi teachers’ experiences about their work in Finnish schools. Her research interests are Sámi education and research methods, Indigenous youth, culturally meaningful education and diversified education contexts. She is a Sámi scholar connected to the Ohcejohka (Utsjoki) municipality in Finland.
Torkel Rasmussen
is an Associate Professor of Journalism, the Sámi University of Applied Sciences, Norway, where he has been teaching journalism since 2001. He has worked in Sámi media and has a degree in journalism from the University College of Oslo and a PhD in language sociology from UiT the Arctic University of Norway. He has published in the fields of Indigenous journalism and the revitalization of minority and Indigenous languages.
Erika Katjaana Sarivaara
(PhD in Education) works as a University Lecturer at the University of Lapland. She is a North Saami speaker, and a writer who has revitalized and taken back the language in her family. She uses North Saami both in academic circles and as a home language with her children. She has worked as a post-doctoral researcher from 2015 to 2016 both in the Aanaar Saami language technological project at Giellatekno, and the Čyeti čälled anarâškielân project.
Irja Seurujärvi-Kari
(PhD in Sámi and Finno-Ugric studies) is a researcher in Indigenous Studies and a retired Sámi lecturer of Sámi studies at the University of Helsinki. Her dissertation Ale jaskkot eatnigiella [Don’t silence our mother tongue] (2012), which is written from Indigenous perspective, deals with the Indigenous movement and the role of language within it. She has co-edited several anthologies of Sámi people and their culture. The Saami: A Cultural Encyclopaedia was awarded the State Prize Award by the Ministry of Education in 2005. In addition to her academic work, she has acted as the long-term former Vice-President of the Sámi Parliament of Finland and President and Vice-President of the Sámi Council (a cooperative organ of the Sámi living in four countries). At present she leads Sámegiela ja -kultuvrra Dutkansearvi (the Sámi Language and Culture Research Association), whose main duty is to publish the first journal of Sámi Studies in Sámi in Finland. During 2020–2023 she will be a member of the Sámi Parliament of Finland.
Trond Trosterud
is Professor of Saami Language Technology. He led the Aanaar Saami language technological project at Giellatekno in 2015–2016 which made the tools that form the basis for today’s writing. He is a native speaker of Norwegian, who has used Finnish on a daily basis for the last three decades. He uses North Saami in professional contexts, making extensive use of writing tools (e-dictionaries, proofing and grammar checking tools, corpora), as both input (via reading) and writing practice are too scarce for automatizing the writing process. He is able to read Aanaar Saami to a certain extent.
Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen
is Associate Professor of Indigenous Studies at the University of Helsinki. She received her PhD in Latin American Studies. Her recent research interests include human–environment collectives, epistemological plurality, Indigenous leaderships, notions of time, and research ethics. She has collaborated with Arawak-speaking Machineri and Apurinã in Brazil since 2003. Her publications include monographs, several edited books and articles on Indigenous politics, mobility, youthhood, biocultural landscapes, as well as Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies. Virtanen is the author of Indigenous Youth in Brazilian Amazonia: Changing Lived Worlds (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and co-editor of Creating Dialogues: Indigenous Perceptions and Changing Forms of Leadership in Amazonia (Colorado University Press, 2017). In addition to her research interests, she has co-authored various Indigenous school materials.