My project was inspired by the Saami (or Sámi) indigenous peoples of the northern parts Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Russia. Like many other indigenous peoples worldwide, the Saami have long been oppressed by the governments of many countries. They were put into boarding schools where their culture, language, and bloodline was almost erased. I created a more literal interpretation of the Saami People’s flag. The flag shows a circle in the center of a green, yello, blue, and red striped background. The circle is split down the middle, and one half of the circle is blue, while the other is red. These two semicircles represent the Sun and the Moon respectively, while the stripes in the background represent the common colors found in traditional Saami garments called Gákti, which is meant to represent various aspects of Saami culture. I also included the phrase “Čájet Sámi Vuoiŋŋa” which is a phrase in the Northern Sámi language, which directly translates to “Show Saami Spirit”. This phrase is a watchword to promote Saami identity and activism. Some of the challenges I faced in the process of creating this, was figuring out how to use the Illustrator software. I had trouble finding shapes to create the final venn-diagram-appearance, with the stripes in the middle and the sun and the moon on the outside. Another challenge I faced was finding a font that supported the special characters used to right the text in the Northern Sámi language, as many fonts do not support the ‘ŋ’ characters, nor the ‘č’ and ‘á’ characters. I was ultimately not able to use my ideal font with these characters, as they were not supported. So I had to use a font that wasn’t my first choice, but ended up working just fine.
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