Solidarity in decolonization : Indigenous-Environmentalist alliance and the struggle against clearcutting in Sápmi

Abstract: This study concerns the alliance against clearcutting that has been formed between the Swedish environmental movement and the Sami movement. Earlier studies on environmentalist/Indigenous alliances have found that such cooperation often has been formed through reproductions of a colonial political relationship, perpetuating Indigenous peoples' structural marginality. This study therefore examines the production of solidarity within this alliance, and attends to how they challenge or reproduce a colonial power asymmetry. The analysis shows that the alliance has formed solidarity over identity and community borders, through conscious commitment to pluralism. This commitment has further shown to rely on the alliance functioning as a site of knowledge-sharing, placing embodied knowledge-practices central to a solidarity production of decolonization. The environmentalists in the alliance have by understanding and recognizing the forests they are seeking to protect as Indigenous land, and as occupied territory central to traditional cultural Indigenous life, enabled a decolonizing reconfiguration of the environment. Notwithstanding, the study problematize certain findings in relation to the risks they demonstrate of reproducing a colonial power asymmetry, and discusses the complexities of environmentalists claiming authority within foreign cultural landscapes, and carrying out protests affecting the social dynamics of Indigenous local communities.