Reetta Humalajoki’s research visit to UNC

From March to May this spring, Reetta Humalajoki visited the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. During the visit she participated in the Carolina Seminar on American Indian and Indigenous Studies, including giving her own talk titled “Finnish Solidarity with Native North American and Sámi Rights from the 1970s to Today.” The talk explored the work of Finncomindios, a Finnish solidarity organization for Indigenous rights in the Americas, founded in the late 1970s. Discussing tensions within these solidarity efforts, the talk explored the enduring entanglements between images of Native North Americans and Sámi issues in Finland today. Thank you to everyone who attended for their time and thoughtful questions and comments!

From Chapel Hill, Reetta also travelled to Austin (TX) to conduct research at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and to Durango (CO) to conduct research at the Center for Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College. In the process she collected hundreds of documents related to US-based solidarity and lobbyist organizations for Native rights.

You can read more of her thoughts on the research trip in Finnish on the department of Cultural History’s blog Kulttuurihistoria nyt!