Det etnografiska museet i Hamburg, Museum für Völkerkunde, Tyskland,
har under våren 2012 haft en utställning om samer
och samisk kultur. Utställningen presenterade nidbilder på samerna och slarvigt
ihopsatt samedräkt som gav ett intryck av samerna som ett primitivt folk.
I samisk media och på Facebook fanns protester mot
utställningen.
Verddeviessu skickade ett protestbrev till ledningen för
Etnografiska museumet i Hamburg.
Chefen för Det etnografiska museet i
Hamburg, Museum für Völkerkunde, ber nu om ursäkt och förklarar utställningen.
Här är svaret till Verddeviessu:
”Verddeviessu – Sami Center against discrimination and racism,
Thank you very much for your mail concerning the way the Museum of Ethnology
in Hamburg presented the Sami people in a small part of a general exhibition
about the relation of the traditional way of nomadic life in a modern sedentary
surrounding, curated by the University of Leipzig. I received it yesterday. The
exhibition closed regularly last Sunday as it had reached its final date. We
are filled with consternation about your bad impressions as we have a long
tradition of excellent and free of doubt cooperation with Sami people and have
the highest esteem for their culture.
As far as I could get from the Swedish text, you sent me, your concern is
essentially about one display case with caricatures on Sami people. As it
seems, that you were only able to judge by pictures, taken by someone else, you
could probably have got a wrong impression of our intention.
In this showcase we confronted books like “The Sami”, edited by the Sami
parliament and other scientific books, i.e. the right explanation about the Sami
way of living, with caricatures depicting the most popular prejudices about
Sami people. I copy you part of the English text, where we point this out to
the visitors and we do so as well in the German text placed nearby to this
display as well. We find that a very tried and tested way in museums pedagogies
of making people aware of their own prejudices. If we have offended the Sami
people involuntarily with this way of production, we apologize for what we see
as a deplorable misunderstanding and will take in the future even more care,
that such misunderstandings don’t dull again the otherwise shining cooperation
that started more than 30 years ago between Sami people and our museum.
With best regards
Prof. Dr. Wulf Köpke
- director –“
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