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.

1 1 Problem statement and research methodology 1.1 Introduction In the fall of 2010 I started the Master’s Program in Indigenous Studies at the University of Tromsø. My educational background was my first degree in Pedagogy and Romano-Germanic philology along with working experience in several projects related to indigenous issues 1 , such as Kola Sámi languages documentation, indigenous competence- and institution building (e.g. the project on establishment of the Kola Sámi competence center) and development of the Sámi cooperation across the borders. 2 I am a member of the Kola Sámi community and therefore the choice of my research field was connected with my interest to the history of my people and my own family’s background. Since the social knowledge about the Kola Sámi community is relatively low both outside and inside Russia, I had the opportunity to choose several research topics which would be relevant in the frame of the MIS program. It was quite a challenge for me to find the research topic which would be both valuable for the local community and interesting from the international perspective. The current study is relevant from the local perspective because the topic of the Sámi traditional settlement pattern – sijjt was quite seldom discussed and little research was conducted in Russia on the relocations of the Kola Sámi community in the period mentioned by the current study. The study is relevant from the international perspective because little information is published on the history of the Kola Sámi people with regard to community-oriented approaches. The current work will use the narratives of the community members apart from the written resources in order to restore the succession of discussed relocation processes. 1.2 Problem statement and research questions If at one time ethnographers tended to romanticize traditional communities, placing them outside of history 3 , contemporary social and anthropological research is becoming focused on the historical and social influences of particular relationships. The aim of this project is to trace the impacts of a single policy event on the history of an 1 e.g. the Kola Saami Documentation Project. [online].- URL: http://saami.uni-freiburg.de/ksdp/index.html, 20.05.2012. 2 e.g. the Skolt Sámi culture across the borders . . [online].- - URL: http://www.skoltsami.com/info_en.html, 03.03.2012. 3 see Wolfe 1982; Fabien 2002.