“Extractive Futures”: Performative contribution at the RIFS conference Tough Conversations in Tough Times

The five presenters created a “map of voices”, by each embodying the perspective of a specific rightsholder or stakeholder present in Finnmark. Drawing on techniques of Brechtian theatre and supported by a Chorus, the performance  aimed  to give the audience the feeling and understanding of the tensions (and chaos) that the green transition is creating in the region due to the disconnectedness of needs and interest among different stakeholders and rightsholders.

Here is a short extract from the performance from the Chorus:

“Every voice claim necessity and virtue — fear, profit, order, loyalty.
Yet the contradictions are plain:
rights versus profit,
urgency versus consent,
security versus freedom.

Look to the North.
A fevered scramble —
wind towers like stakes,
mines dug into fjords,
capitals racing to claim “what the world needs.”

We would like to ask you:

Who decides what is “necessary” for the green transition?

Who truly benefits from development?

What must be done to recognise and implement Indigenous rights under such pressure?

And to you from other regions:

What is your responsibility here?

How can you act in solidarity without speaking over or replacing local voices and while respecting people’s right to decide?

Think.
The answers are not handed to you.
They must be chosen.”

At the end of the performance, we invited the audience to reflect on two questions. We would now like to pass these questions on to you, as a reader, to consider them as well:

How is the ‘energy rush’ in Sápmi connected to your own situation or homelands?

In what ways can solidarity emerge, and through which formats or practices?