The Sámi Museum Siida’s community-based project Ellos min árbi – Long Live Our Cultural Heritage explores how repatriated Sámi objects can best become part of living Sámi culture. Through the project, Siida will strengthen its national and international repatriation efforts to return Sámi collections to the Sámi community in Sápmi.
The project examines and develops Sámi ways of carrying out object repatriation in collaboration with the community. Its goal is to publish knowledge and research results that other Indigenous museums and museums interested in the topic can benefit from. The project will result in a traveling exhibition on repatriation and rematriation, scientific articles, a guide to best practices, a podcast series, and an international conference on repatriation.
The project promotes rematriation, through which museum objects are returned both materially and immaterially as part of living culture. With the Museum Vision project that was funded by Finnish Cultural Foundation we indigenized our main exhibition Enâmeh láá mii párnááh – These Lands Are Our Children. Now it is time to indigenize repatriation and community work—an approach that will benefit the entire museum field!
The project is funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation.
Project duration: October 1, 2025 – September 30, 2028.