About five years ago, when I first began to look for
information on the Sami politician Elsa Laula (1877-1931), I couldn’t find a
great deal. I knew she had published an influential pamphlet in 1904, Facing Life or Death? (Inför Lif eller Dod?),
the first written work by a Sami woman that covered a large number of important
issues in just 30 pages. A fiery speaker, she was fearless in standing up to
power in both Sweden and Norway. Elsa Laula Renberg (her married name) was
considered a “foremother” and a “pioneer,” but according to some she’d never
been given full credit for her role in helping found the twentieth-century movement
for Sami self-determination.
Recently, when I went searching for her again on the Web I found
that she was in the news in northern Scandinavia. A new one-woman play about
Elsa Laula opened in Trondheim, Norway in February as a joint production of Nord-Trøndelag Teater and Åarjelhsaemien
Teatere (a Sami production company). It will be shown again in the fall of 2012
and at a string of festivals as well. A video on You Tube shows
snippets of Cecilie Persson’s performance (in Swedish).
There’s also a recent short video
about Elsa Laula, in Swedish and Norwegian.
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| Elsa Laula, Sami political pioneer |
Born in 1877 in the south of Sápmi, Elsa Laula went to Stockholm
to further her midwifery studies. There she came into contact with Swedish
feminists, including the progressive Ellen Key and the editors of the journal Dagny, which published news of Laula’s
efforts on behalf of the Sami. Laula’s political work always included Sami
women and in 1910 she founded the first Sami women’s association. She saw the
contributions of women as essential to changing society. But she had begun her
organizing as early as 1904, when she gathered a group in Stockholm to found
the first association of Sami, which had its own newspaper. In 1908 she married
the reindeer herder Tomas Rehnberg and moved to Norway, where she eventually
had six children. But she continued her political work, giving speeches,
writing articles and letters to the authorities, never giving an inch in her
pursuit of justice for the Sami. In 1917 she helped convene the first Sami
National Assembly in Trondheim. Elsa Laula died in 1931, from tuberculosis.
