Lietuvos etnologija / Lithuanian ethnology

The article explores how people identify with their ‘Saminess’. To understand this better, discourses of affects and emotions around the topic are analysed, particularly shame and inadequacy. They show how people ‘measure’ Saminess in relation to ‘proper’ Sami. I investigate here if this is a fault of a discursive dichotomy between modernity and tradition – the depiction of a traditional indigenous group forming in opposition to a coloniser’s modern identity.