The Case for a Sámi “Trail of Tears”: Dangerous Dreams in the Era of Green Colonialism

This paper presents a visual metaphor or figure as a tool for Indigenous mobilisation: an imaginary Sámi "Trail of Tears." This imaginary trail recalls the largely untold history of the forced evictions of Sámi families in Sweden during the first half of the twentieth century. We engage Agamben's political philosophy to examine and interpret the colonial present in Swedish Sápmi and argue that such an imaginary trail also invokes a figure for contemporary social mobilisation in Sápmi against the green (re)colonisation that increasingly threatens to turn the entire region into a green sacrificial zone. The trail has the potential to serve as a "dangerous dream," challenging colonial state power as well as global resource extraction, much like Indigenous artivism and the struggle for visual sovereignty.