The second part of the project will examine how, and in what ways, World War II and its immediate aftermath affected and fostered the development of Indigenous identities. One main aim of this project is to place the South Saami experiences in a global context, and study them in light of comparative perspectives, especially regarding the situastions of the Indigenous communities in North America.
During World War II Indigenous men served in regular armies, in ethnic military units or in various roles of home defences or resistance movements and activities – like in Nazi occupied Norway. Peoples with marginal or limited attachments to nation-states were drawn into this global conflict from Europe to Southeast Asia, from Africa to the Pacific. Sometimes Indigenous people were drawn into military service, sometimes the war came to them in the form of invasion. To what extent and in what form were citizens from the South Saami community actively engaged in war service? To what extent and in what way were the Indigenous communities affected as civilians, and did their experiences differ from non-Indigenous fellow citizens?
To many Indigenous citizens the world war brought implied suspicions and accusations of disloyalty, in part because of historical animosities between their group and the nation-state, in part also because their traditional territory stretched out beyond the geographical border of the state. How the experiences of the World War II rework the relationship between the South Saami population in Norway and it´s encompassing nation-state. How have memories of the Saami war engagement been reflected in cultural memory within and without the South Saami community?