“The Long Road of Reconciliation”

The Church of Sweden’s Performative Apology to the Sámi People

Authors

  • Dirk Gindt Stockholm University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29173/scancan227

Keywords:

Sámi people, Church of Sweden, Indigenous testimonies, performance, Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada

Abstract

Grounded in performance theories and Indigenous methodologies, this essay focuses on the 2021 solemn service in Uppsala Cathedral, when the Church of Sweden apologized for its historical complicity in the colonization of Sápmi. The essay discusses key rhetorical features of the Archbishop’s apology and analyses how the service incorporated Sámi visual, material, oral, and performance cultures. Of specific interest are five Sámi testimonies about settler colonialism and artist Anders Sunna’s redesign of the sanctuary. To tease out the contextual specificities (and limitations) of the apology and situate it as part of unfolding decolonial processes across the circumpolar North, the essay draws selective comparisons to Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s 2008 formal apology to First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Peoples.

Author Biography

Dirk Gindt, Stockholm University

Dirk Gindt is Professor of Theatre Studies at Stockholm University. He is the co-editor of the volume Viral Dramaturgies: HIV and AIDS in Performance in the Twenty-First Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), the author of the monograph Tennessee Williams in Sweden and France, 1945-1965: Cultural Translations, Sexual Anxieties and Racial Fantasies (Bloomsbury, 2019), and the co-editor of the volume Berätta, överleva, inte drunkna: Antirasism, dekolonisering och migration i svensk scenkonst (Atlas, 2022).

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Published

2023-03-26

How to Cite

Gindt, D. (2023). “The Long Road of Reconciliation”: The Church of Sweden’s Performative Apology to the Sámi People. Scandinavian-Canadian Studies, 30, 1–30. https://doi.org/10.29173/scancan227