A Climate Yoik

IDA (Seven years old, speaking in Swedish): I am Ida, and I am Åarjel Saemien Niejta—a Southern Sámi girl.

OLA (Her father, interpreting in English): We are the First Nations people here in Sweden.  We live mainly up in the mountains, where it’s really cold. We love cold, we love winter, and we have a lot of reindeer.

IDA: I wonder if you have seen the latest Disney film, Frozen II? This movie is about our culture: it’s about the Sámi people and Ahtohallan, the magic river.

OLA: Ida has been thinking that, when she is yoiking in a few minutes, if you imagine Frozen and Ahtohallan, then she will take you down to the other side of the world.

IDA: As a child, I think it’s strange that the grown-ups, who are the leaders of the world and who are supposed to be so wise, are acting like children. I think it’s strange that we children are the ones who have to act like adults and tell the grown-ups that we have to work together to save our planet. That we need to take care of Mother Earth.

OLA: And now, Ida works as a yoik artist. Yoik is the oldest form of music in Europe. It is an ancient form of singing, with which you can communicate and have contact with several worlds simultaneously. These worlds are split into heavenly, underground, and earthly life. The difference between singing and yoiking is that, in a song, you sing about something specific: love, the past, the present, the future, and so on. When you yoik, you actually become what you are yoiking. It is also an art of collective memory, during which the Sámi people have contact with their ancestors.

IDA: Tell them that I have released four songs on YouTube and Spotify and lots of places.

OLA: Ida’s work is on Spotify and every platform, so you can listen to her. And now, Ida will perform—

IDA:—En klimat-joik.

OLA:—A Climate Yoik.

Ida presents The Climate Yoik.

OLA: Thank you very much. Now, Ida would like to do a yoik with you all together. It’s the yoik of the worm. And everybody can use their finger, like this—

(Ida and Ola make an inch-worm gesture with their finger, to demonstrate)

IDA:—to make a worm.

Ida presents The Yoik of the Worm.

IDA & OLA: Thank you.