Põhjarahvas, Põlisrahvas: Curating Indigenous Histories in Estonia

• In Event: Historicizing Indigeneity: Decolonization, Disciplines, and Politics

Abstract

This presentation examines the curatorial interventions of the exhibition “Art in the Age of the Anthropocene” at Kumu Art Museum in Tallinn, Estonia (summer 2023). I pay close attention to the way one particular room narrated visual and material histories of environment and identity. Though an admittedly small part of a large-scale exhibition, the subsection aimed to draw visitors’ attention to an enduring construct of Estonian identity as a loodusrahvas, people of nature. Art and visual culture played important roles in the creation of this identity, not least because of the surprisingly close-knit relationship between the art world of Soviet Estonia and Finno-Ugric ethnographic anthropology. At the exhibition, some walls juxtaposed Soviet images of primordial landscapes with contemporary images of Finno-Ugric nations (Sámi) as well as other Native nations of the Circumpolar North. Elsewhere, the display featured a little-known collection of incised sperm whale teeth and incised ivory drill bows. Made by Alaska Natives, these marine mammal materials attested to the historic role of Baltic actors in the Russian invasion and occupation of Alaska. I explore why the display's broader international framework proves a formidable lens in the interrogation of Estonian imaginaries of indigeneity, unsettling a parochial nationalism that otherwise obfuscates actual Indigenous self-determination and relational environmental justice.

Author

• Bart Pushaw, U of Tennessee at Chattanooga