Afanasyeva, A. Forced relocations of the Kola Sámi people: background and consequences / by Anna Afanasyeva. - Tromsø: University of Tromsø, 2013. - 82 p.: ill., map, portr.

10 1.5 My role: being a native researcher in own community I myself have an indigenous background and speak both the majority language – Russian, and one of the local Sámi languages – Kildin Sámi. I am myself from a family that has been relocated. My family comes from the village Varzino and after the resettlement part of my relatives live in Murmansk and others live in Lovozero. To a great extent this knowledge and my own background allowed me to avoid communication problems with the interviewees and ambiguity in interpretations of the information. 22 However, my research addresses an event in the history of a community which I have not experienced myself. One should also differentiate between being an insider of the community and an insider of a particular situation. I investigate the history of Sámi community in the light of the politics of the Soviet Union, however I was born in different conditions and political situations right after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Though I can be regarded as an insider of the community, I am still not an insider of the studied situation and it should not be assumed that I share equal roles with a community member who have never seen me before and our first communication is a research interview. 1.6 Outline of the thesis This Master’s study is presented in six chapters. The first chapter provides an introduction and main outlines of the research aspects of the study. It is devoted to the main theoretical considerations and overview of previous research works on the topic. This chapter additionally describes the methodology I used, in particular methods of data collection, types of data, principles of informants selection and the relevant strategies in the field. It also briefly outlines definition of my own role along with some practical challenges I dealt with in the field and theoretically in structuring the thesis. The second chapter deals with contextualizing the discourse of the study. It touches upon a unit of traditional Kola Sámi settlement and social organization, which in this work is represented by the term sijjt . The sijjt pattern was practiced on the Kola Peninsula prior to the start of the first Soviet policies in the 1930’s. This chapter provides a historical context of the study particularity with emphasis in geographical distribution of the Sámi settlements before the relocations. 22 Spradley 1980:65; Barnard, Spencer 2002: 180.