Salmon grief in Sámi digital games

Abstract

The aim of this article is to explore the role of Indigenous digital game creation at the time dramatic environmental and ecological changes. Our study focuses on the river- human relations of Sámi people in the Ohcejohka (Utsjoki) area, Northern Fennoscandia, which has recently faced a radical decline in salmon stock. We analyze the creation of two little digital games made in Finnish Sápmi in 2023 - The Story of the Rainbow Salmon (Laiti 2023a) and The Rainbow Salmon Talks With Fish (Laiti 2023b) - by employing a decolonial and Indigenous autoethnographic approach. The results showed that the two games discussed did not only become makeshift playgrounds for expressing luossamoraš (salmon grief), but also involved creative grief towards survivance in a larger environmental, cultural, and political context and the sustainability situation faced by the Sámi on the River Deatnu. The game creation goes beyond expression, and is also about reciprocal relations of beings, both humans and more-than-humans.