Season 2: Episode 6

The Things I Can See On the Mountains

After thousands of years of tradition, a shifting climate is forcing changes in the way Sámi families herd reindeer. But some climate solutions are also threatening their way of life. This is the story of the Aleksandersens, a Sámi reindeer herding family in northern Norway.

Read More

SáMI BLOOD

Sámi Blood was released in 2016 and went on to win major awards at festivals around the world. It tells the story of Elle Marja, a young Sámi reindeer herder coming of age in the 1930s. Exposed to racism at her boarding school and struggling to connect to her family, she fights to find an authentic identity. The LA Times review is here. 

Sofia Jannok

Sofia Jannok is one of many Sámi musicians who is reclaiming the tradition of joiking, using it to bring attention to Sámi issues and just to make Sámi people more visible in Sweden. You can hear some of her music here.

Credits

Transcript

[00:00] INTRODUCTION

SOUND: ATV, dogs yipping

AMY: Welcome to Threshold, I'm Amy Martin, and I'm on island in northern Norway, sitting in an ATV next to Reiulf Aleksandersen. Unbeknownst to me, I'm about to be initiated into a quintessential Arctic experience: a marginally terrifying four-wheeler ride. 

SOUND: ATV

AMY: Reiulf is a reindeer herder, and he's taking me up to the top of a mountain where he and his kids are going to be working all day. He tells me to brace myself as we leave a gravel road and head out into hummocky alpine terrain...

SOUND: ATV

AMY: ..through slushy snowfields and straight up a mountainside, about 350 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle. As we power up the mountain, we lurch up and down and side to side. I'm still kind of shocked that I didn't fall out.

SOUND: Reiulf cuts the motor

AMY: That was some amazing driving. (laughter)

AMY: As soon as the machine is off, silence washes in. This island is called Kvaløya, which means “whale island.” We have long views of the mountain peaks all around, and below us, we can catch glimpses of deep blue fjords. 

REIULF: This is Ruksesvárri.

AMY: And what does that mean?

REIULF: The Red Mountain. The stones look like they are red.

AMY: The Aleksandersens are one of many Sámi families who are keeping the ancient tradition of reindeer herding alive. 

AMY: And where are the reindeer right now?

REIULF: They are...everywhere.

AMY: Reiulf gestures to the trees in the valleys below us. The reindeer are hiding away down there, nurturing the calves which were born just a month or so earlier. Reindeer are tall, shaggy creatures in the cervid family – that's the same family as deer and elk – and both the males and females grow big, branched antlers. You find them all around the Arctic; in North America, they're called caribou. And although I've always assumed animals could either be categorized as wild or domesticated, in a Sámi context, reindeer are sort of neither, or both. Most of the time, the Sámi let their reindeer roam free, to brave the elements, face predators, and follow their natural migratory instincts. But at several key points during the year, they gather them up for different purposes. And Reiulf says there's a real art to this.

REIULF: You have to know the reindeers' nature. Like, moving with reindeers, you have to think, where do they go, naturally. You can't work against the nature.

AMY: For instance, later in the summer, when it warms up and the mosquitoes come out, the reindeer will naturally seek windy cooler spots, like this mountaintop. At that time, the Aleksandersens will then nudge them along, and herd them into a big fenced-off area – kind of like a wide corral – so they can put notches in the calves' ears to signify ownership. Then they set them free again. It's a system of careful observation and close connection with the reindeer, but not total control over them. And it's a lot of work.

REIULF: Work, yes, reindeer herding is working. You're not getting fat. (laughter)

MUSIC

AMY: As we learned in our last episode, the Sámi are the indigenous people of northern Scandinavia and western Russia. For hundreds of years, they've been pressured to assimilate, and now they have a new problem to contend with: climate change. When I met the Aleksandersens in the summer of 2017, we talked a lot about how a warming planet is impacting their traditions. But a few months later, they reached out to tell me about another issue that had emerged – a separate but related problem which is seriously threatening their ability to keep herding. All of the parts of this story are important for understanding climate change and what it means to be a Sámi reindeer herder in the Arctic, so I'm going to take you through it, step by step, as I learned it, on this episode of Threshold.

MUSIC: THRESHOLD THEME

“What is Norway and what did we decide is not norwegian. Sámis.”

“I am a Sámi and my country is Sámi but it is colonized.”

“You have to be the river. To joik it you have to become that thing.”

“I think everything we do with the reindeer is special and have meaning.”

“I would like to be how it was when I was a child before the climate changes started.”

[04:23] SEGMENT A

AMY: Am I doing this right?

ULF ISAK: Yeah.

AMY: Ulf Isak Aleksandersen is ten years old, and he's teaching me how to lasso a reindeer. 

AMY: So if I want to try to throw it, now, do I…

ULF ISAK: Yes, see, point like that?

AMY: Uh-huh.

AMY: There aren't actually any reindeer around at the moment – I'm aiming for their practice post. That hammering you hear in the background is the sound of his dad, Reiulf, and his older sister, Sara Katrine, building a fence.

ULF ISAK: You stand like this

AMY: Ok, so put one foot in front of the other

ULF ISAK: And then you…

AMY: So I can lean back and then throw it?

ULF ISAK: Yes

AMY: I'm holding a loop of the rope in one hand, and with the other I throw the lasso as I hard as I can...

SOUND: rope hitting fence

AMY: ...and I miss.

AMY: (laughter)

ULF ISAK: That was good!

AMY: You're just saying that to be nice.

ULF ISAK: That's really nice.

AMY: (laughter)

AMY: Ulf Isak has blue eyes, rusty brown hair and an expressive, freckle-filled face. And he carries a knife on his hip, a signature of Sámi reindeer herders.

AMY: How does it feel when you get up here?

ULF ISAK: Ah, its feels good, because you have bad day, and then I go up here, and then I get better.

AMY: Why is that, do you think?

ULF ISAK: Ahm, I think it is because my father is like a reindeer guy, and then I will also try my skills.

AMY: And Ulf Isak has a lot of skills – for example, he can speak three languages: Norwegian, English and Sámi. 

ULF ISAK: (Asks his father a question in Sámi)... Ok

AMY: Ulf Isak says he's proud to be Sámi, but sometimes it's hard, too. He and his sisters are the only kids who identify as Sámi in their school. And that can leave him feeling a little isolated.

ULF ISAK: I can't speak Sámi with my friends, because they don't understand me.

AMY: So you can kind of have two lives. Like you have your Sámi life at home and then you're more Norwegian at school?

ULF ISAK: Yes.

AMY: Is that hard or do you like having two identities?

ULF ISAK: It's very hard, because the Norwegian, it's very hard to learn and then it take over your life at school. And then you can't stop it when you come home.

AMY: So it's kind of like the two things are in competition a little bit.

ULF ISAK: Yes.

AMY: Do you feel one side is winning, or do you think you can have both?

ULF ISAK: Mmm, I think I can have both.

SOUND: pounding fence posts

AMY: Sara Katrine Aleksandersen is 16 – the oldest of the family's three children – and she's using all of her strength to drive a fence post into the ground. Her blonde hair is tucked into a white New York Yankees baseball cap, and like her brother, she wears a knife, and knows how to use it.

SOUND: pounding fence posts. Clatter of it hitting the ground, Amy saying “you did it...”

AMY: It starts to rain lightly, and it seems like a good time for a little break, so we sit down and take in the view. It's the end of June, and there are still patches of snow everywhere. We're well above tree line, and the clouds are clinging to the tops of the mountains all around us. It's incredibly peaceful, and quiet. I ask her how it feels to work up here.

SARA KATRINE: Oh I'm very tired, but I feel very good, too.

AMY: Honestly, it looks like you've got the hardest job of everybody.

SARA KATRINE: It is the hardest job, yes, but I'm very glad I got it because it means that my dad..ahm..he's ah...it's 50/50. 

AMY: He's saying, ‘you can do this.’ 

SARA KATRINE: Yes. And ah, that's very good.

AMY: Women and girls traditionally played a large role in Sámi reindeer herding, but as the Sámi were colonized, women were increasingly restricted to indoor work, while men dealt with the herd. And this dynamic continues to play out today. It's really tough to make a living from reindeer herding alone – to cover the family's needs, one person has to work a more conventional job.

SARA KATRINE: It costs so much, a family needs one who is working with other things.

AMY: Ah-ha, yeah, and in your family that's your mom?

SARA KATRINE: Mm-hmm.

AMY: And that's the way it is in a lot of families?

SARA KATRINE: Yes, every family.

AMY: Really?

SARA KATRINE: Most of it.

AMY: But Sara Katrine's not really on board with this plan.

SARA KATRINE: I could not think that I'm going to work in an office with papers and computer and sit there all the day and I think I like more to be outside and help with the reindeer herding, and the jobs that the boys do. Yeah.

AMY: Yeah. It sounds like you feel more alive.

SARA KATRINE: Yes, much more.

AMY: When we met, Sara Katrine was preparing to leave home, to go to a special school with a reindeer herding focus. Even though this meant she would have to stay in high school for an extra year, it was worth it to her. It's not only that she enjoys reindeer herding – she feels responsible for protecting it.

SARA KATRINE: I think everything we do with the reindeer, and in the reindeer herding life is special and have meaning. That is something I want to take care of.

AMY: And she says the only way to take care of it is to keep doing it.

SARA KATRINE: If you don't work with reindeers you will never learn the words because you don't need them. So it is fewer and fewer people that learn these words and can talk about the reindeer with these words.

AMY: Like if you lose reindeer herding you lose all of that knowledge.

SARA KATRINE: Yes. I think I lose myself if I lose reindeer herding. Part of me.

RISTEN: The reindeers have always been the thing that we think of first.

MUSIC

AMY: I met Sara Katrine's mother, Risten Turi Aleksandersen, in her office in Tromsø, a city on the northern coast of Norway, about an hour away from the family's reindeer herding grounds. She works here as the general secretary of the Sámi Church Council, which is part of the Church of Norway. But her roots are in Guovdageaidnu, a community on the central Norwegian tundra where Sámi culture is very strong.

AMY: How much was reindeer herding part of your life?

RISTEN: It was all my life. (laugh) I didn't know of anything else.

AMY: Risten says the migration of the reindeer herd was the central rhythm of her life as a child.

RISTEN: You always have to...okay, what do we need to do now, in our reindeer herding life, like the yearly cycles. 

AMY: The Aleksandersens were living in Guovdageaidnu until just a few years ago, but they moved out here to the coast because there was a reindeer herding permit available for this area. In order to herd reindeer in Norway, you have to be Sámi and you have to get a permit which is issued by the Norwegian government. They're granted only for specific spots, and they're increasingly hard to come by. So, when a permit came up, Risten and Reiulf decided to leave their families and a strong Sámi community behind for the sole purpose of trying to pass on the knowledge of reindeer herding to their kids.

RISTEN: We want them to know about the way of living, know about the traditions, know about this knowledge that we have, and try to bring it forward to them. So it's important for us.

AMY: But Risten and Reiulf are worried about their children's future. Sámi reindeer herding lands have been fragmented by mines and railroads, highways, and other developments. And now, climate change is a threat too.

RISTEN: So because of the climate changes we have other kinds of winters now, which are not good for reindeers.

AMY: Reindeer and caribou are built for winter. They can smell lichens and other plants through meters of snow. In fact, the word “caribou” comes from a Canadian First Nations word that means “snow shoveler.”

RISTEN: In the old times you first had cold periods were so the ground was frozen and when you then had snow on that the ground was dry and frozen. So the reindeers would be able to dig themselves down through the snow.

AMY: Bus Risten says that Northern Norway is getting warmer and wetter.

RISTEN: Now we have rain, and then snow, and maybe cold weather. So you have ice on the ground. Which means that they will not find food. Because they will not manage to dig themselves through the ice that's on the ground. 

AMY: Digging through the kind of sugary snow you get when it's extremely cold is one thing. Getting through heavy, wet, cement-like snow and then breaking layers of ice to get to the food below is quite another. Reindeer and caribou didn't evolve to do that. So Risten says, in order to keep their herd healthy...

RISTEN: We need to give them food, extra food now. We have been doing that for  quite some years now. I think it's maybe five years or so.

AMY: Feeding the reindeer in the winter is an additional financial burden, and it creates more work. But Risten says the worst part is how doing this undermines traditional knowledge.

RISTEN: With these changes happening, the knowledge that the old people have can no longer be used today. It's just like, so...there's a huge difference. They never had to give their reindeers extra food. And now we do it on a daily basis during the winter. And that it's becoming the normal thing.

AMY: Are you trying to tell your kids, like, this isn't normal, we shouldn't have to feed them. Do you think they understand that? 

RISTEN: I hope they do. Ah, we try to speak about that, and try to tell them that this is something that has not been done earlier, and you need to know why not, and you need to know how it was in the earlier time.

AMY: Yeah. So your kids are hearing that, but it's a little bit theoretical for them.

RISTEN: Yeah, I guess, I'm afraid so.

AMY: All of this has turned Risten into a passionate advocate for climate change action. It's one of the main things she focuses on in her work with the Sámi Church Council. 

RISTEN: I would like it to be as it was when I was a child. Before the climate changes started.

AMY: Sara Katrine, Ulf Isak, and Reiulf are now resting in their tent at the top of the mountain after a day of hard work. It's almost midnight, but since it's late June in the Arctic, the sun is still flooding the mountaintop with light. And Reiulf tells me that when he first heard about climate change, he didn't really believe it.

REIULF: It seems so bad that it can't be true.

AMY: Uh-huh, so there was a way that you were like, oh, people are just being extreme.

REIULF: Yeah, but now I'm getting a little bit older, and know a little bit more. And ah...And I started to understand that it is real. It is really something that we are...ah...we are the reason.

AMY: The turning point for him was when he started to see climate change happening with his own eyes.

REIULF: But you know for a lonely reindeer herder, it's not so much...I have not been in school and learned so much. I just have to trust on the things I can see on the mountains.

MUSIC

REIULF: I think when it's starting to rain in the middle of winter, then I'm thinking about what, what's going wrong, what are we doing, what, what have we done. Every old person I speak with say, this is not normal.

AMY: And he's seeing other changes too. After the Aleksandersen family made the move out here to the coast, they found out that some new wind turbines might be going up on their reindeer herding grounds. They were worried about how this might affect their animals, but the plans they were given made it look like there would still be space for their herd. So that was the situation when I met them in the summer of 2017 – they were anxious, but trying to be optimistic. But a few months later, when I was home, I got an e-mail from Risten. She sounded panicked, and we set up an online call.

RISTEN: Last Friday at ten minutes to nine in the evening I received an e-mail that said, ‘tomorrow we will start to have these explosions.’

AMY: The new wind farm was definitely moving forward, and they had just received word that a new road was going in – a road that wasn't in the plans they'd been given earlier. And it cut right through their grazing area. The first step was going to be to blasting the mountain with dynamite.

RISTEN: And I got so mad, I got so mad. I called to this man who sent the e-mail and I just, I, I was so angry, and I said to him, ‘you are not doing anything, because we have not had the chance to move the reindeers away, they will be there, and they don't know anything, and you can't send an e-mail nine o'clock in the evening that you are coming the morning and starting to do this.’ I was so angry.

AMY: The first time I met Risten, I was struck by her measured, understated way of talking, even when we landed on big, weighty issues, like threats to her family's future in reindeer herding. But at that time, those threats were on the horizon. Now, they were at her doorstep.

RISTEN: Once you start like with dynamite, then you could scare the reindeers, really like scare them, and we wouldn't know where they go.

AMY: Risten managed to get the company to hold off using the dynamite until they'd had a chance to move their reindeer. But as it turned out, that was just the beginning. We'll have more after this short break.

Break

[19:07] SEGMENT B

AMY: Welcome back to Threshold, I'm Amy Martin, and we're in the middle of finding out about a new wind farm going in on an Arctic Norwegian island. It's called Project Nordlicht, and when it's complete, it'll have 67 turbines, supplying 281 megawatts of power, making it one of the largest on-shore wind energy projects in Europe. And it's located right on top of the land used by a Sámi reindeer herding family. This is Risten Turi Aleksandersen. 

RISTEN: First they have built the big cities and taken the land from the Sámis like that. And then when they have this problem with the climate change and the pollution and so, then they need to solve that problem. And the way they do it is they take even more land from the Sámis, and other indigenous people as well.

AMY: Like a lot of big energy projects, there's an international cast of characters behind this wind park. Siemens Gamesa, a Spanish company, is supplying the 67 turbines, a German pension fund is one of the project's largest investors. And although it was promoted as a project that would supply clean energy for 50,000 Norwegian households, for its first 15 years of operation, all of the power from the wind farm will actually go to an aluminum smelting plant owned by Alcoa, a U.S.-based company. So while these huge, multinational entities have been celebrating Project Nordlicht as an environmental success story, to the Aleksandersen family, trying to herd their reindeer on this land, the picture looks very different.

RISTEN: So you are still colonizing the indigenous peoples' land. But now you are doing it in a ‘friendly’ way because now you are like ‘environmentally friendly’ and that's so good for people. But you are still taking the land, and destroying the indigenous peoples' opportunity to live their traditional lives. Ah, I get so angry because of this.

AMY: Risten is a recognized leader for climate change action – she's been invited to speak to representatives of the UN and the Vatican about how carbon emissions are directly impacting her family, and she wants a world in which we are not relying on fossil fuels. But she says how we get there is crucially important.

RISTEN: We will all need to sacrifice something if we are to save this planet. And people are not willing to do that. So they just push it forward to the people who, like, have a smaller chance to fight against it. Or whose voice will not reach so far away.

AMY: That conversation happened in the fall of 2017. We talked again in the summer of 2018, after the Aleksandersens had been living with the development of the wind farm for about a year.

AMY: So you can just describe to me, how has the mountain changed, like what does it look like now?

RISTEN: Ah, you know it's, ahm, there are roads everywhere. I think there is 90 kilometers of roads there.

AMY: That's about 56 miles of new road. When I visited the reindeer herding grounds, it was wide open space as far as we could see. No roads, no power lines, no buildings. Now Risten says the sounds of dynamite and constant truck traffic fill the air, and it's hard for them to keep the reindeer herd together.

RISTEN: You now, especially for Reiulf who is up there every day, it's really hard. You know because, you know, all the mountains, it's so changed. And it's so challenging to work with the reindeers now.

MUSIC

AMY: Risten says she's spending countless hours writing letters, attending meetings, and trying to get the different parties involved to listen to her family's concerns. She doesn't really have hope that they can stop the development, she's just trying to mitigate the impact. I talked to the Norwegian government and one of the companies involved to get their perspective, and they say that the permitting process for this project followed all of the rules for public input. But Risten says the published plans don't always match what's actually happening on the ground. And things keep changing. In July of 2018, they found out another wind project is going in, with a different owner. This one is small – just four wind turbines. But the plan is to put the turbines right where the Aleksandersens gather their reindeer -- in the very spot where I spent the day with Reiulf and the kids the year before. Risten says news of this additional project hit the family hard.

RISTEN: Ahm, right after we received the letter, you know this letter with the four new windmills, I really just felt like I fell into a big black hole.

AMY: Risten says they'd been clinging to the idea that they were at least going to be able to keep this one area protected from the development. But if these last four turbines go up.

RISTEN: We wouldn't have a place to gather the herd anymore. And if we can't gather the herd, then the reindeer herding is like...it's not possible, if you can't gather them. Ah, so, actually right now I can't even think about that.

AMY: As we prepare this episode for release, the Aleksandersens are waiting to find out if those additional four turbines will be built. Risten says if that project is stopped, they are going to try to keep herding, even with all the changes happening around them. But, if those additional four turbines are approved, she doesn't see how they can continue.

RISTEN: And sometimes I think...ah, what if we just give up...but then I think again, no, why. Because this is the life I want to teach my children. So I can't give up. And sometimes maybe I don't even have an explanation I just keep on. Because if I stop being a reindeer herder I guess I stop being myself. And that I...I can't do that.

AMY: So, after being passed down generation by generation, for thousands of years, the fate of this family's reindeer herding operation may come down to whether or not a government official approves or denies the building of four wind turbines. The strain on the family has been enormous, and the irony of the situation is not lost on Risten. She's ended up in the strange position of being a passionate advocate for climate change action, and an opponent of a major renewable energy project. I asked her if this experience has made her less interested in climate change activism.

RISTEN: No, no, I guess it makes me even more passionate about it, because what I see is that the way we work with climate change is also important. You know, how do we solve the climate change.

MUSIC

AMY: Risten says we're never going to solve the climate problem using the same mindset that created it – a system that continually shifts costs onto less visible places, and less powerful people. She says that's what we have to fix if we really want to address climate change at its root.

RISTEN: For me, I think it's not just to change the way we act. But the way we act needs to be guided by the way we think. And to that I can see that the indigenous peoples' thinking, and the indigenous peoples' connection to the Earth is a guide.

AMY: But she says it's very hard to get people to listen. Sámi families across the Scandinavian peninsula are in the same position as the Aleksandersens – fighting climate change on the one hand and new wind farms on the other. In fact, all around the world, indigenous communities are simultaneously being threatened by climate change, and being forced to sacrifice land and resources in the quest for climate change solutions. 

AMY: Do you feel hopeful for the future? Like, do you feel like reindeer herding will still be a way of life a hundred years from now?

REIULF: Huh. (long pause) Ah, to be honest, I don't really...I don't really think so. And without the reindeer the Sámi people are...I think they are gone. 

AMY: And Reiulf says if that happens, the world will be losing a very special form of wealth. He says he can feel it, when he's out working in the mountains.

REIULF: I, I think about it when I'm alone, and when, I'm, yeah, I'm a little bit richer, they are a little bit poorer than me. Not in a way to hurt anybody, but, but, because I feel that there is something, we have something. We have something we can share which make a difference.

MUSIC

REIULF: This is my way to live. Nobody can take it away from you.

MUSIC

RISTEN: I can't give up. You know. Ahm….I can't, ahm, I can't, I can't accept that the way that we live and the way that my ancestors have lived is a livelihood that's supposed to end. You know because I can't see one single thing in my way of living that has a less value than other ways of living.

MUSIC

AMY: Risten says she thinks they'll find out about those last four wind turbines soon. If you'd like to be informed when that happens, please join our mailing list at Threshold podcast dot org.

Credits

NICK: Our reporting for this season was funded by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the Park Foundation, and you, our listeners. Our production partners are Montana Public Radio and PRI's The World. 

AMY: Threshold is made by Nick Mott, Rachel Cramer, Cheryl Skibicki and me, Amy Martin, with help from Frank Allen, Jackson Barnett, Josh Burnham, Michael Connor, Rosie Costain, Matt Herlihy, Rachel Klein, Zoë Rom, Nora Saks, Maxine Speier and Zach Wilson. Special thanks to Lars Magne Andreassen, Stephanie Frostad, Niila Inga, Sven Roald Nystø [roll NEE-stuh],  Shanley Swanson, Line Vråberg and Kathrin Wessendorf. Our music is by Travis Yost.

MUSIC

AMY: And on the next episode of Threshold…what happens when the world gets a whole new ocean?

TERO: There are now new areas and new types of operations which were more or less impossible 20, 30, 40 years ago.

AMY: That's next time, on Threshold.

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