The national Sami museum in Finnmark Norway, RiddoDuottarmuseat, has secured a competitive grant from Arts and Culture Norway (Kulturdirektoratet). The funded project is called “What? Where? How?”. With this support Tamagi Museum and Learning Centre (TMLC) and our partner institution, Kokelv Coastal Sámi Museum in Norway, will explore a wide range of activities under the heading “Intangible Cultural Heritage” (ICH) as defined by UNESCO.
ICH includes “traditions or living expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed on to our descendants, such as oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe or the knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts.” (UNESCO).
Kokelv Coastal Sámi Museum and TMLC have teamed up to save these endangered traditional skills and knowledge in their respective communities and to build a reusable framework for similar partnerships in the future. Both institutions have prioritized the need to pass traditional knowledge to the next generation as their shared mission. They do this by involving local traditionbearers and local school children in the project.
Kokelv represents a Coastal Sámi indigenous community, while Tamagi represents the Tamu (Gurung) people, a national minority in Nepal. By identifying cultural commonalities and shared challenges, each museum has been able to pinpoint what they most urgently need to preserve. For Kokelv, the priority is keeping alive knowledge and skills related to «fiske-mea» (traditional knowledge on how to navigate to find the right fishing places) and the traditional use of local slate.
For Tamagi, it is the traditional use of nettle as a textile fiber, the use of bamboo as material for wicker work and the preservation of local Tamu place names – all of which are disappearing.
Beyond their individual goals, the partnership aims to develop a transferable model for cross-cultural museum collaboration, as well as a foundation for continued cooperation between the two institutions after the project concludes in 2027.