Negotiating Indigenous participation and heritage at a multicultural festival

Abstract

This article investigates how Indigenous participation and heritage are negotiated at a multicultural festival in Norway. While such festivals respond to the call for meeting places that foster inclusion and belonging in society, researchers have warned against promoting superficial understandings and essentialism. Based on fieldwork and semi-structured interviews with festival management and Greenlandic participants, we found that Indigenous participation and heritage were negotiated along three lines. First, participants shared enthusiasm for the festival and its inclusive vision. Second, they showed in different ways the imperative of understanding the complexity of Indigeneity as a diverse and multifaceted experience. Third, in response to the festival management’s call for participation, one acted as a curator while others became silent consultants. We argue that the experience of both festival management and Greenlanders could have been significantly deepened by a more profound and shared knowledge of the nature of Indigeneity.