UNPFII2018

Poster Intervention at No access without consent – Arctic Railway and Future of Saami Youth Side Event at UNPFII

PARTY (Participatory Development with Youth) was co-organizing a Side event with Youth Council of the Sámi Parliament in Finland, Sámi Youth in Finland Organisation and Suohpanterror Saami Artivist Collective at the 17th session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, 16-27 April 2018. University of Lapland, Faculty of Art and Design is leading PARTY which is a Horizon 2020 MCSA RISE funded project developing service design methods to enable service development and stakeholder dialogue between indigenous San youth and local government.

The Side event was discussing concerns over loss of land, environmental impact, possible damage to culture and language, and how it might affect traditional reindeer herding, shape Saami response to Arctic railway plan. Suohpanterror, Saami artivist collective, group anonymous Saami artists, was giving a poster exhibition in the event.

The Sidev event was responding to need to clearly introduce a Saami point of view to the planned Arctic railway in the public discussion. There are three main concern:
1. Arctic railway would contribute to climate change.
2. The Arctic railway would bring heavy infrastructure, power lines and service buildings to the fragile Arctic nature.
3. The Arctic railway would reduce grazing lands for reindeer and hundreds of reindeer would annually be run over by the trains.

PARTY project was organizing a poster inclusion to promote the issue and presenting an art based method to make a statement. Poster inclusion is one method of Party-project, where is developed methods and tools in the field of social change. The poster inclusion in UNPFII was made as a participatory workshop where all the participants were welcome join and participate!