Sami family outside church
Guovdageaidnu, Norway
On Palm Sunday, after the church service, which was in both Sami and Norwegian, fifteen teenage Samis who had just completed the confirmation ceremony, and who were thus now members of the church, gathered outside in the sunshine in front of the chuch, so that their families could take pictures of them.
Boys and girls, most of them sixteen years old, stood between mother and father, while uncles and nieces and grandfathers took pictures. Everyone wore his or her finest Sami clothing, red and blue the dominant Guovdageaidnu colors. The shirt, or dress, the gaktis, were as blue as the summer sky, with bright red at the shoulders and cuffs and hem. (A man's long shirt has a hem.) The boys looked so handsome, and the girls so pretty, as they stood for pictures with various members of their families, everyone enormously proud. Many people wore reindeer skin boots, for in late March, the ground was still covered with snow. With the snowy tundra stretching across vast distances behind them, and with their faces lit by the early springtime sun low in the south, the fresh, bright, confident sixteen-year-olds were photographed on film and digital, and recorded on video.
For this was the day when these beatiful children were honored.
John Slade
Climate Change and the Oceans
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