Reflection of the movie Sami Blood

Reflection of the movie Sami Blood
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Introduction
Sami Blood written and directed by Amanda Kernell is a Swedish-Norwegian-Danish co-production about the indigenous Sami people. The Sami people raise reindeers in the far north of Scandinavia. The film reveals the oppression that the Sami people received from other Swedes in the 1930s when most of the story is set. The story is centered on an intelligent Sami girl who wants to leave her rural roots behind. The story also helps viewers to enter into a little-known culture of the indigenous Sami people. The basic story of the film is relatable to any individual from a land where indigenous tribes have been ruled over and seen to be inferior by settlers and colonizers.
Sami blood follows the life of a 14-year-old Sami girl Elle Marja and her sister Njenna. They are taken away from their Indigenous reindeer-herding family and placed in a boarding school run by the government in the 1930 Sweden. At the boarding school, Elle has dreams of an education and a future, but she encounters challenges which hinder her dreams. The problems include racial prejudice which classes her people as inferior. There are also issues of class and sexuality which she faces making it difficult for her to succeed, (Malkki, 1992). Elle Marja has the drive to be successful in life, and she is curious and excited about her new surroundings. In my opinion, she works hard to be accepted and be able to integrate with others thus she masters the Swedish language and her other lessons. Her sister Njenna struggles to master the Swedish language and different experiences too.
The boarding school that Elle and her sister were sent to was intended to raise the indigenous people to an acceptable level to the rest of Sweden society. The Sami people were seen as an inferior tribe who needed to be taught about their place in society, (Sium, & Ritskes, 2013). The removal of the indigenous teenagers from their lands can be viewed as non-lethal genocide since it was meant to raise them, educate them and form their consciousness in a way that makes them identify with the culture, society, and policies of the Swedish society and not their society. Therefore, Ella, in the end, does not understand herself as being part of the Sami group by avoiding, and she does not like going back to her Sami home. It can be compared to Canada's boarding school system where native children were removed from their families and reshaped intellectually and psychologically to resemble the dominant culture.
Elle serves as a proof of the complex psychological transformation that most of the children of the Sami people were forced to endure. The lessons at the government schools taught that Sami was inferior which was a belief by mainstream Sweden at the time. The experiences led to Elle Marja having Self-dislike and disdain for her people, (Sium, & Ritskes, 2013). Through the movie, Elle Adopts a Christian name which can be attributed to a metaphor for conversion. Conversion is reinforced by harsh lessons and attitudes at the boarding school. There is a scene where the Sami children line up so that their Craniums can be measured as part of junk phrenology. Also, a flashbulb illuminates the children's nude bodies, publicizing pictures to science journals that want to capture their supposed otherness.
Elle Marja’s eagerness to learn and adopt European norms make her to become an exemplary pupil at the boarding school quickly. She starts undertaking European norms like holding her teacup with an extended pinky and reciting Christian hymns with pride. She takes a bath to remove the supposed Sami stink. She also burns and replaces her traditional garb and starts smoking cigarettes, (Thomas, & Woolford, 2017). When a feeling of being an outcast from her peers overcomes her, she runs away to Uppsala after becoming infatuated with a Swedish boy. In my opinion, it shows the lengths throw which women in society go through when they fall in love and feel that they do not belong in the current environment.
After running away, Elle faces discrimination as a result of being Sami and therefore ends up coming back to the Sami community. A place where she thought she would feel safe and comfortable with no discrimination since they are her people. She finds out that it appears different as a result of the cultural change that she had undergone through her journey from home to the boarding school and Uppsala. The Sami community no longer epitomizes home but just an unusual and foreign place that she contempt. She ends up rejecting her family even though they offer unconditional love to her. Due to the lessons learned at the boarding school, she finds it difficult to identify with her Sami people, (Huff, 1999). Transitioning to another identity results to Ella being trapped on the threshold dividing the Sami and the rest of the European society. She was in a subconsciously devastating state of mind.
The writer of the Movi...