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Rebellion, Religion and Science:
medical and medicalized discourses on the psyche of an
indigenous population (Nordic countries, 1852-1960s)
Abstract
In
November 1852 a group of around 35 nomads violently
attacked the vicar, the tradesman, the bailiff, and
their respective families in a small village, Kautokeino,
in Northern Norway. Their battle cry sounded: ‘Do
penance! Convert!’ The vicar and all the family members
survived the attack, while the tradesman as well as the
bailiff were viciously stabbed and beaten to death. In
the following trials, voices were heard claiming the
perpetrators to be unaccountable, suffering from
religious mania, but even so, five of them were
sentenced to capital punishment, the rest to life
sentences or shorter.
This lecture investigates how this
particular event for more than hundred years came to
influence medical and medicalized discourses on the Sámi
population; the indigenous population in Norway, Sweden
and Finland. Concepts of biology and culture, informed
by the developments within European and colonial
science, played a major role in investigations, debates
and postulates – as did of course developments within
psychiatry. In colonial medical research, a move from
culture to biology has been discerned from the late
1800s while at the same time it has been convincingly
argued that the concepts of culture and biology have not
necessarily been consistently used, but ambiguously and
inconsistently (Ernst, Waltraud & Harris, Bernhard.
Race, Science and Medicine, 1700-1960. Routledge:
London and New York [1999] 2005: 4-8, 235-238).
Ambiguities and inconsistencies are present also in
medical and medicalized discourses over the Sámi
population, but even so, one might discern some main
trends: First, notions of madness was intertwined with
religion, second, with cultural traits, and, eventually,
with biology. In the 1960s and 70s, however, the
rebellion was “de-medicalized” and placed within the
frames of in particular colonialism.
The event and its interpretations
have had profound impacts. For example, the director of
a forthcoming (2008) movie, “The Kautokeino rebellion”,
Aslak Gaup, states (http://www.nfi.no/english/norwegianfilms/show.html?id=699):
“Until recently the uprising was a taboo subject among
the 1,600 population in Kautokeino; still it has
inspired five novels, two operas, one symphony, and
several documentaries. But since most families have
ancestors who were involved, it was not considered
proper tea time conversation”
The lecture is based
upon material pertaining to the trials following the
1852-event, letters written by central agents on both
sides, and literature on the question of ‘Sámi psyche’
and mental illness.
En
col·laboració amb la Residència d'Investigadors (CSIC).
Lloc:
IEC |
