An Ontological Politics of and for the Sámi Cultural Heritage – Reflections on Belonging to the Sámi Community and the Land

The aim of this chapter is to consider certain particular practices of belonging as integral aspects of the intangible cultural heritage of the Sámi, an Indigenous people. The two practices to be discussed are vital social and customary law institutions¹ of the Sámi: the kinship-based practice of ethnic recognition and the particular relation of the people to the land. Both institutions have become heavily politicized and objects of external definition during recent decades in Finland. We analyse them both in the light of the discourse on international legal cultural heritage and as fundamental ontological elements of Sámi society. Our analysis