Culturalization as a governance logic: Reconciliation in Norway

This article examines reconciliation in Norway, asking how the Norwegian state’s approach to reconciliation exemplifies what I call the logic of culturalization. I theorize culturalization as a settler-colonial logic of governance that neutralizes Sámi political claims to jurisdiction and decision-making by recasting them as matters of culture. Empirically, the article analyzes two parallel developments in Norway in 2023: the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report and the protests in Oslo following the Supreme Court’s Fosen decision, led by Sámi youth. The seemingly divergent processes – reconciliation on the one hand and the government response to Sámi-led demonstrations on the other – are not oppositional but mutually reinforcing expressions of the same settler-colonial governance logic, operating through the mechanisms of distraction, delay, and decoy. Specifically, I argue that decoy politics operates through three interrelated mechanisms: reframing legal and distributive claims as negotiable rather than binding, converting political legitimacy into symbolic inclusion and cultural recognition, and deferring substantive land and jurisdictional claims through procedural delay.