Sami Parliament Persuades Norwegian Pension Fund to Divest from DAPL

 

In an act of international solidarity between indigenous peoples, the Sami parliament in Norway has persuaded the country’s second largest pension fund to withdraw its money from companies linked to a controversial oil project backed by Donald Trump.


The project to build the 1,900 km Dakota Access oil pipeline across six US states has prompted massive protests from Native American activists at the Standing Rock Sioux reservation.

This week, after lobbying by the Sami parliament, Norway’s local authority pension fund KLP announced it would sell off shares worth $58m in companies building the pipeline.

Vibeke Larsen, president of the Sami parliament, said the pension fund announced the move when she arrived at a meeting in Oslo to discuss Dakota Access. “We feel a strong solidarity with other indigenous people in other parts of the world, so we are doing our part in Norway by putting pressure on the pension funds,” she told the Guardian.

 Read the full article by Rachel Fixsen  in the Guardian.

Clearing Out translation wins prize from American-Scandinavian Foundation

Helene Uri, author of Clearing Out

I'm pleased to announce that the American-Scandinavian Foundation in New York  recently awarded me the Nadia Christensen Prize for my translation of Clearing Out [Rydde ut] by Norwegian author Helene Uri.

I previously wrote about Helene Uri and this particular novel in a blog post on Lapponia in 2014. I loved the novel so much that I asked the Norwegian publishers about translating it, then pursued publication in the U.S. Although publication hasn't happened yet, I did receive a 2016 NEA translation fellowship to help with the work. I'm delighted that the ASF prize will also bring attention to the novel.

The ASF also gave the Leif and Inger Sjöberg Award, recognizing distinguished effort by a translator who has not previously published a literary translation, to Kara Billey Thordarson, from Red Deer, Alberta, for her translation of Stormviðvörun by Icelandic author Kristín Svava Tómasdóttir.

Excerpts of both translations will appear in the Spring issue of Scandinavian Review, the journal published by The American-Scandinavian Foundation. Another excerpt from Clearing Out was published in 2016 by Two Lines, the translation review.