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.

54 5.3 Psycho-socio-cultural (PSC) aspects and adaptation of the community The anthropologist Gray highlights that involuntary relocation causes countless problems for local communities. Economies are destroyed and production activities disrupted, giving rise to impoverishment, while social and cultural disintegration along with psychological stress leads to sickness and even death. 168 He argues that many displacement projects focus on restoring the economic base or providing compensation of material losses, while the psycho-socio-cultural realm of the displacees is often neglected. The main aspect, which I would like to address further in the paragraph concerns the mentioned above aspects, which appeared to be obvious in my study during direct communication with informants and from research works used. I addressed the topic of psycho-socio-cultural (PSC) impoverishment inflicted by involuntary displacement 169 to investigate and discuss not only material losses, which the community has experienced. I was interested to look at how the disruption of space and temporal organization of the pre-location culture influenced ability of the community members to work out new adaptive patterns to the changed cultural and economic conditions. Special attention was paid to how relocations influenced psychological and health state of displaced Sámi people. The research of Kozlov provides quantitative analyses of mortality rates among the Sámi population in the period right after relocations from the years 1958-2002. The period of 1958-1968 corresponds to the time when the relocations were implemented and the next two decades represent the time when community was adapting to the changes in the region and post-displacement conditions in Lovozero. As Kozlov points out, the death rates among Sámis were higher than the death rates of Russian population, but the death rates of newborn Sámi children are lower when compared to the same rates of Russian children. In his study Kozlov points out that the high mortality rates of the Kola Sámi people due to external reasons (not natural death from age or disease) were especially high and were increasing to 50% in the 1970’s and the 1980’s. Kozlov mentions the two main triggers to the high mortality rates were the rise of destructive behaviors, such as alcohol and substance abuse, and negative psychological feelings prevailing among the Sámi adults of working age. As Kozlov mentions, the word ‘negative’ is too soft to describe the situation of population when at a very high mortality rate HALF of all deaths are drowning, 168 Gray 1996:99. 169 Downing; Garcia-Downing 2009: 195.