Niillas Somby

In the Hour of the Wolf

Power lies with the activists at the grassroots, no matter how much those in higher positions try to rewrite history. Niillas Somby is an icon of the Sami resistance movement. In 1979, he was one of the hunger strikers outside of the Norwegian Parliament building, drawing attention to protests against a hydropower dam near the town of Alta in the far north of the country. Together with the Kola Peninsula in Russia, the northernmost regions of Norway, Sweden, and Finland constitute Sapmi, the traditional homeland of the Sami, Europe's only officially recognized indigenous people. In 1982, after the Supreme Court of Norway upheld the government's decision to build the Alta dam, Somby was one of three people trying to sabotage a bridge leading to the construction site. The action failed, with the bomb they were carrying going off too early. Somby lost an arm and an eye and was facing more than twenty years in prison. With the help of an international network of indigenous activists, he managed to escape to Canada where he was adopted and sheltered by First Nations until the main charges against him were dropped and it was safe for him and his family to return to Norway. In the Hour of the Wolf is a tale of struggle and survival, of solidarity and kinship, of steadfast principles and spiritual awakening. It is written with care, rumination, and wit. The reader learns about both Sapmi, the First Nations of Canada, and transnational indigenous politics. It is a unique account of an extraordinary life. In the end, Somby reflects on the path of the Sami struggle for sovereignty from the protest camps of the 1970s to the halls of the Sami Parliament.