This project engages with three different archives and brings them into a novel dialogue with the landscapes in which they were once produced. Our archival sources from the Finnish Geological Expedition to Sayan and Altay Mountains, Helinä Rautavaara Museum, and Encyclopaedia of Saami Culture enable better understandings of the temporal layers of biocultural landscapes and their actors. We ask: whose stories are told in the archives and what remains to be told? How can archives be understood through local land-based knowledge, contemporary storying and temporal layers? Thirdly, what is the role of the archives in memory and heritage work in different locations? Methodologically and analytically, we will be working with a collaborative approach as well as local onto-epistemological perspectives. This will allow us an in-depth understanding of the local landscapes and their actors, especially the role of the nonhuman actors, which are social entities in the social worlds of our studied places. Drawing from the method of storying with the landscapes, ethnographic fieldwork, story-telling circles, and collaborative analyses of archival materials, we can better understand biocultural changes in the region, as well as the on-going memory and cultural heritage work in different locations. This project will have significant scientific and societal impacts on ongoing interdisciplinary debates on memory politics, heritage studies, and decolonizing collaborative methodologies.

2022