Discrimination and Emancipation: On the Indigenous Peoples of Northern Norway in the Works of Ilona Wiśniewska

Abstract

This article examines the issue of Indigenous peoples in the reportage of Polish-language writer Ilona Wiśniewska. In her book Hen: In the North of Norway (2016), the writer described the discriminatory practices faced by members of the Sami nation. The author analyzes the narrative strategies present in Wiśniewska’s text and demonstrates how the writer’s attitude, which is close to the reflections of postcolonial criticism, is embedded in the narrative structure. Wiśniewska portrays the Sami as the most excluded group among the inhabitants of the Norwegian North. She portrays Norwegian education as a means of destroying ethnic identity and instilling in members of Indigenous peoples a complex toward the dominant majority. The reportage also reveals how Norwegian institutions sought validation for their discriminatory practices in academic discourse in the 19th and 20th centuries. Wiśniewska readily employs irony when presenting the views of the colonizers. In writing about the Sami, she avoids generalizations and focuses on the individual characteristics of her characters. She reconstructs historical events based on the individualized statements of her informants. She avoids authorial commentary that would determine who is right and who is wrong.