Talvatis

Bures!

Definitely not the wrong place to ask, but I’m afraid I might not be super helpful. This is what I managed to find.

There are some online resources for learning South Sámi:

uTalk, which seems to offer a course in South Sámi for English speakers, but you have to pay a subscription fee.

Govlelgem is an online resource that with sound recordings and exercises (that are linked to a course book with the same name, so I’m not sure if the book is required?). It’s in Swedish, though.

Sámediggi has an online dictionary where you can translate between South Sámi and Swedish.

As for gapta, I feel like a good starting point is following @samekofter on instagram. They post a bunch of pictures of different traditional Sámi clothing and they always write which area they originate from. I feel like it might give you a sense of what a South Sámi gapta looks like “in general”. When it comes to family specific details, it’s definitely harder to find unless you have living relatives who know or old photographs to examine.

As for joik, I found this website: The Way of the Yoik. They seem to have three different courses on joiking and one of them is free, so that might be a good start.

Buorre ođđa jahki! ❤ 

I’m so sorry this happened to you and I hope your situation has improved since you wrote this to me.

The way I see it, your family cannot erase your Sámi identity by disowning you. Sámi identity is something you carry within yourself. It’s not like a club membership that your family can revoke.

I encourage you to still wear your gábdde if you wish to. Your gábdde doesn’t just represent your current family, but the generations of family that came before you. It belongs just as much to you as to the rest of your family and they cannot forbid you from wearing it.

On a side note: traditional Sámi clothing is always evolving. If you feel like you can’t wear gábdde because it doesn’t match you gender identity, you might find comfort in knowing that gender neutral and lgbtq+ friendly gábdde are becoming a thing. I hope you don’t feel like you can’t wear gábdde because it doesn’t properly reflect who you are.

Mátjuk & Tjubuk

These hats are worn by lule Sámi people of the old Gällivare area tradition. It’s called the “old” Gällivare because its gábdde used to be worn by Sámi people in the Gällivare area, but somewhere around the turn of the century, between the 1800s and 1900s, it almost completely fell out of use. Instead, the Jukkasjärvi gákti took over. Jukkasjärvi Sámi moved in from the north and as people of the different area traditions married, the Jukkasjärvi gákti became more commonly used. In modern times, the old Gällivare gábdde has made a comeback as more and more Sámi reclaim it.

The mátjuk is worn by women. The name of the hat comes from a Sámi word for fold/bend. While it may look simple, the pattern construction is actually quite special and tricky (according to duodji master, Anna-Stina Svakko).

The tjubuk is worn by men. I haven’t been able to find a lot of information about or pictures of this hat, but from the pictures above you can see that it holds some resemblance to hats of other area traditions. The shape is reminiscent of the lule Sámi hats of Jokkmokk, while the red decorations resemble those of the north Sámi čuipi. Rather than a tassel at the top, like north Sámi hats have, the tjubuk has what looks like wool fabric rolled into a knob, which can also be found on other lule Sámi hats.

Sáivu