Who Owns the Land and the Sea? Ella Marie Hætta Isaksen, Nonhle Mbuthuma and Silje Ask Lundberg

Just weeks after the historical film Ellos Eatnu/Let the River Flow had premiered, lead actress and activist Ella Marie Hætta Isaksen was back in chains – for real, this time. Together with fellow Sami activists, she barricaded the Department of Oil and Energy, to protest that the authorities have done nothing in the 500 days since Norway’s Supreme Court ruled that the wind park in Fosen violates the human rights of Sami reindeer herders in the area.

South African Nonhle Mbuthuma has also fought for her people’s land and rights. Together with her community, the indigenous group in Pondoland, she took the Australian mining company Transworld Energy and Minerals to court – and won.

Hætta Isaksen and Mbuthuma both fight a double fight, for nature and for indigenous people’s right to their culture and traditions. For many indigenous activists, the environmental struggle is seen as an integrated part of the fight against extractivism – extracting natural resources for export and sale – and that against colonialism.

For Mbuthuma, her fight is a continuation of earlier generations’ fight for the same land, against colonial powers and the apartheid state. Mbuthuma is the founder of the organization Amadiba Crisis Committee, which is fighting for the land and community in Pondoland on the east coast of South Africa.

Ella Marie Hætta Isaksen is an activist, a musician with her band Isák, and an actress.

When the two of them meet for a conversation about environmental struggle and indigenous rights, they are joined by Silje Ask Lundberg, former president of Friends of the Earth Norway and a senior campaigner for the organization Oil Change International.

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