From Dreamland to Homeland: A journey towards futures better than pasts

Abstract

This chapter draws upon the experience and inspiration behind the making of an essayistic documentary for the twenty-first century. A line from “Dream-Land” (1844) by the Romantic poet Edgar Allan Poe inspires the film title. The film is a journey that details the people–places in the Sámi landscapes, made by the figure of an Indigenous anthropologist performing as an earthling, a figure participating in the making of new stories about creating more responsible futures for all living beings on this planet. Dreamland also poses questions about aesthetics as an avenue for reopening both past and present memories, reflections and ambitions, and thereby performing new figurations of reconciliation in a (post-) colonized Arctic space.