The 2018 edition of the Sámi festival Márkomeannu elaborated a narrative about the future of both the environment and society by articulating fears of an oncoming apocalypse and hopes for Indigenous Sámi futures through a concept presented to festivalgoers via site-specific scenography, visual narratives, and performances. This essay, addressing the festival as a site of artistic activism, reveals the conceptual bases and cultural significance of the festival-plot in relation to Indigenous Sámi cosmologies, the past and the possible future(s) in our time marked by escalating climate change. I argue that Márkomeannu-2018, providing a narrative about the future in which, amidst the Western societies’ dystopic colonial implosion, Indigenous people thrive, can be regarded as an expression of Indigenous Futurism. Counterpointing 19th-century theories predicting the imminent vanishing of Indigenous peoples while positioning the Sámi as modern Indigenous peoples with both a past and a future, this narrative constitutes an act of empowerment. Sámi history and intangible cultural heritage constituted repositories of meaning whereas a folktale constituted a framework for the festival-plot while providing an allegorical tool to read the present.

The Sámi people share their ancestral homeland (Sápmi, sub/Arctic Europe) not only with animals, plants, trees, rocks, colonial-settlers and more recent immigrants but also with other-than-human beings. For centuries, the Sámi have co-constructed Sápmi’s landscape with these entities through respect and reciprocity. Despite enforced conversion, elements of Sámi Indigenous worldviews persisted. Enshrined in placenames, collective memory of interactions with other-than-human beings has been passed down through generations. The paper highlights the importance that toponyms have in transmitting cultural values, identity, and a sense of belonging.