Nils-Aslak Valkeapää

Valkeapää was born on March 24, 1943, in Enontekiö in Finnish Sápmi to a family of nomadic Sámi reindeer herders. His father, Johannes J. Valkeapää, was Finnish Sámi from the Kaaresuvanto area, while his mother, Ellen Susanna Aslaksdatter Bals, was Norwegian Sámi from Uløya in Troms. Valkeapää lived in Finnish Sápmi until his father's death, when his family moved to Skibotn in Norwegian Sápmi.

Valkeapää's mother tongue was Northern Sámi. However, like many Sámi children in the 1950s, he did not have access to formal education in his native language and did not learn how to write in Northern Sámi until adulthood. Along with his early education in boarding schools, Valkeapää spent six years studying at the Kemijärvi Teachers' Training College, though he never worked as a teacher.

Music

Valkeapää first came into the public eye as a performer of traditional Sámi joik and was central to the revitalisation of the genre. His debut record, Joikuja, was released in 1968. In 1973, folk and jazz musicians Seppo Paakkunainen, Ilpo Saastamoinen and Esko Rosnell invited Valkeapää on a musicians' retreat. During the retreat, Valkeapää was inspired by Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 and its African-American spiritual influences to develop fusion joik. In collaboration with Paakkunainen, he developed Juoigansinfonija, a jazz-joik symphony. In 1978, Valkeapää released his jazz-joik record Sámiid eatnan duoddariid. Valkeapää's music was somewhat controversial in Finland, both for his unorthodoxic inclusion of jazz elements and because Laestadian Sámi often viewed joik as immoral. Valkeapää continued to perform jazz-joik and resisted efforts to "preserve" the traditional form, stating in his book Terveisiä Lapista: "When I hear talk of conserving the culture, I see an investigator of folklore in my mind’s eye, and interpret their activities quite literally: cataloguing a dead culture."

Valkeapää released thirteen records from 1968 to 1994. His song Goase Dušše (The Bird Symphony), composed of nature sounds from the Sápmi region, received the jury’s special prize at the Prix Italia radio competition in 1993. Valkeapää also composed the music for and acted in the Oscar-nominated 1987 film Ofelaš. A recording of Valkeapää performing the theme for the film Ofelaš was sampled by British musician Mike Oldfield in "Prayer for the Earth," a track on his 1994 album The Songs of Distant Earth.

Valkeapää received further international recognition as a musician when he performed at the opening ceremony of the 1994 Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway.

Valkeapää was bisexual, but hid his sexuality throughout his life.

Activism

Valkeapää was a prominent figure in the movement for Sámi rights, which he connected to the broader international Indigenous rights movement. He expressed feelings of solidarity with North American Indigenous communities and particularly Inuit and other Arctic Indigenous people. In 1975, he attended the founding meeting of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP) in Port Alberni, Canada as a Sámi representative of Finland. That same year, he referred to Sámi people as Indigenous people for the first time during an interview on Sámi radio. He was also chairman of the Sámi Writers' Association (Sami girječällid searvi).

Valkeapää became the cultural coordinator of the WCIP in 1978. In this role, he organised Davvi Šuvva, the world's first Sámi cultural festival, in Karesuvanto in 1979.