Этнографическое самоописание как культурный феномен

The desire of indigenous peoples to form their social and political claims in modern global, national and regional contexts based on conceptualization of their culture acquires new shapes and forms of expression. The article deals with ethnographic self-description as cultural form in which the experience of indigenous peoples perceiving their culture in the processes of the production of the new technologies and social contexts of their representation is articulated and confirmed. The patterns of understanding, interpretation and representation of culture are crystallized here as well as in other cultural narratives of indigenous peoples that constitute their way of life. Indigenous authors grasp their cultural heritage through the combination of discourses of indigenous peoples themselves and existing versions of their own culture including science. The indigenous culture is conceptualized mainly in the ethnographic categories. In many cases the articulation of modern cultural forms is based on the pattern of retrospection. The textualization of culture by indigenous authors demonstrates that the view to distinguish peoples as unwritten and written previously formed within positivist approach in the social sciences is not relevant now. Sami culture descriptions and reinterpretations by indigenous authors are not only a means of self-identification but also a way of self-understanding in national and global contexts.