Enter Habit and Consequence
Children are afforded the leeway to take risks, and usually do so with impunity. Accidents do happen, but more often to older children and adults, especially male adults, and particularly when either or both machines and alcohol are involved.
Persons may scheme against each other but seldom fight. Physical altercations do not happen in the absence of alcohol, but since knives are worn on the person, these fights may escalate beyond scuffles. Of these recurring patterned tragedies—accidents and altercations—the latter category clearly classes as violent. The abuse of material culture or alcohol may also reasonably be asserted to be an index of violence if not violence itself. Alcohol will re-enter this narrative later, regarding a historical incident where the Norwegian providers of alcohol are as responsible for violence as the Saami imbibers.What about the Saami treatment of animals, of their machines, of their built environment, of the natural environment? These are arenas where behavior can vary. Dogs are essential to reindeer management, and for the most part, they are a part of the family, sheltered and fed generously. However, dogs are not coddled pets; they are working partners and, as such, must be disciplined on occasion. Those occasions seldom coincide with a “teachable moment” but rather with a frustrating one. Reindeer livestock reside on the tundra, under variable surveillance. They can be driven harshly into corrals, will be earmarked, and eventually slaughtered, if nature or predators have not already counted coup. Herders are more apt to let out their frustrations with animals verbally, when the animal is out of kicking reach. Between the dog and the reindeer, the former is the handier target of both verbal and physical abuse. I can't say that I've ever seen an implement of punishment come into the equation, unless it already happened to be in the hand.
In fact, most physical touching between individuals is incidental.The Saami find a culture of “discipline and punish” utterly alien, unless they should translate some of their own subtle ways to communicate horizontally between peers and vertically, up and down between unequals. Hence, clever feats of revenge and provocation circulate in discourse to entertain and educate for a long time—such as stories about tricking the German occupiers during the Second World War, outwitting second-cousin reindeer-rustlers, pulling the plug to the freezer of someone out of favor, or fibbing to a curious journalist or ethnographer. Given all this handy raw material for narration— which not only entertains but contributes toward reputation of narrator and subject(s)— how could anyone promote a story about beating a dog!
Snowmobiles and other machine-driven vehicles entered the domestic scene in the 1960s. When machines break down there ensues no automatic natural process of healing, self-correction, or learning, unlike what happens when dealing with animals. Some individuals take extraordinary care and enjoyment with their machines, but others do not, especially if finances, or subsidies, permit their replacement. This leads the environment to become cluttered with spent artifacts of various sorts, including those designed for obsolescence without options for reuse or recycling.
Since these particular Saami have been, to an extent, nomadic, and their material culture largely organic, they have relied on the environment to tidy up after them (Anderson 1994). Contemporary trash and garbage and other “refused” items, large and small, now litter communities and the hinterland. Furthermore, outsiders, such as tourists, now massively contribute to this state of affairs. Besides an expanding road system, the tracks of wheeled terrain vehicles now crisscross the tundra, leading to serious degradation of landscape and pasturage, with both locals and outsiders being responsible. While only the subset of Saami reindeer breeders are responsible for the overgrazing on the remaining territory, another major category of environmental insult—dams for hydroelectric power plants—crowns the list of threats to Saami rangelands and Saami culture itself (Paine 1992), as discussed presently. Finally, the Saami also live downwind of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and next door to the earlier Soviet atomic testing grounds in Siberia. Not unlike other indigenous ethnic minorities and other just plain minorities, the Saami have been on the receiving end of structural violence from colonizers and the wider world as well.