TERO MUSTONEN

University of Tampere / Tampere Polytechnic, Dept. of Political Science

"Snowchange – Interpreting the Political Scape, Demarcation Borders And Non – linearities of Temporality and Spatiality of the Northern Indigenous Peoples in the Changing Geopolitics of the Circumpolar North"

The inquiry deals with the changing politics of the northern Indigenous self – governance across the northern zone. The political actors included in the process are nation - states, territorial and local governments, Indigenous groups.

In recent years, there have been a large number of documents and papers presented about the climate and global change effects on the Indigenous peoples of the North, but little research or study has been linked within the social sciences and geopolitical studies to the reterritorialising Indigenous governance processes and the climate change. There are other issues taking place and interacting with the Indigenous peoples of the north, but the climate change may be the most relevant and acute. It is affecting the local time/place continuums, especially in areas where hunting, fishing, reindeer herding and other subsistence activities take place.

In majority of climate change rhetoric and inquiries, the Indigenous organisations, communities and individuals are seen as the "object / victim" of climate change rather than an "actor / subject" of the local, national and international climate change discourse.

A concept of "Snowchange" will be introduced as an explaining tool in International Relations paradigm to discuss the political scape of changing geopolitics of the Indigenous processes.

Snowchange, meaning snow, ice as a process has defined a temporal and spatial guide and structure for the life world of the northern Indigenous peoples. Local languages, systems of knowledge, are in the process of adapting to the climate change, and thus the political scape of the Indigenous life world is changing as well.

The presence of snow in all of the target areas and cases justifies this concept to be applied on the processes of analysis dealing with the spatiality and temporality of Indigenous origin and the change of the demarcation. Climate change, affecting this concept, is discussed in mitigation and adaptation.

The political space of snowchange includes both temporality and spatiality. As a metacontext of analysis, the actual change in conditions, amount and consistency of snow in the target areas contributes to the fact that to operate "snowchange" as a tool, it has to cover both paradigms, non – Indigenous and Indigenous, of spatialities and temporalities while forming an essential element, context of the discussion.

In the non- Indigenous paradigm, a certain discourse of normality is exercised. The discourse has its roots in the definitional way of reterritorialisation of previous "empty land", "terra incognita" into an orderly space and scape, "terra cognita" over which control, colonisation and "normality" can be exercised. To make a map is to order the world to a certain form.

Reterritorialisation includes attribution of new meanings and inclusion, "stories" if you will, to the same territory, when defined, when bound. Usually it is today to that of a nation-state.

Sometimes a simultaneous, sometimes an opposite process is deterritorialisation. It means a change of substance [cultural, economic, social, military] of the territory towards a tool of understanding territory in a multiple sense, outside the European - introduced spatiality.

The European spatiality here is not one of oppression, but a hegemonic one. It has the resources, the means, the willingness and political opportunity or political space to maintain a discourse of normality all over the globalising world of monoculture.

To talk of the Indigenous borders, here operationalised as "temporal borders" of Snowchange, is to highlight the quality of the power of this political scape. The concept of "temporal border" means that borders can slide and change peacefully, for example through family ties, seasonal life and [oral] temporality. Indigenous "temporal borders" of the "past" have relevance today, but they must be balanced with the notion that they are analysed "against" or on the backdrop of the measured spatiality and temporality of linear maps and time of the current Indigenous self-governance.

For example, the lifestyle and heart of the Sámi culture has been described as "never-ending nomadic circle" by Sámi researcher Elina Helander (University of Lapland, Finland). This means, because of the seasonal round of activities, mostly connected with the reindeer migrations, the Indigenous People construct their temporal and spatial reality around the circle of the seasons.

It seems, that the snowchange of the Indigenous life world defined the locality and temporality of the life world, the temporal borders of hunting and fishing. Based on this conceptual framework, the definitive aspects of the Snowchange can be seen.

In this study, the method of analysis links the self-governance and associated border making policies with the political space of action. The political space of action needs to function as well in the Indigenous paradigm, therefore traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) will be included in the methodological tools.

In this inquiry, there is a notion that politics is struggle. Borders of the European kind can be seen as power-using tools, as European-introduced demarcation measures of power. Therefore the quality of the borders and governance that the self-rule and governance can manifest signals the kind of political, environmental, social and economic power, that the decolonisation orchestrated by the colonial actors allows. Climate change policies and issues affecting Indigenous people thus have linkages to the discussion.

Colonial approach in the environmental policy, and specifically in climate change issues, repeats the enlightenment paradigm of the triumph of normality, conformity and imposing of order to a "world of chaos" [of unknown] that is in need of measurement. The demarcation of the European-kind is therefore a process of a certain political struggle, power-wielding. The inquiry has a strong element of geopolitical transformation and regionalisation and decolonisation in the Circumpolar north. In the inquiry, case studies of the Sami and Inuit communities and processes will be discussed to empirically illustrate the Snowchange concept as a tool of understanding and explaining the non-linearities of temporality, spatiality and political scape of the northern Indigenous people.