Our organisation connects researchers, activists, artists and international collaborators to recontextualize and reinvigorate Indigenous culture.

Humans & Soil is an artistic platform committed to decolonizing academic practices and revitalizing our ancient Indigenous relationship with the Earth. The project’s vision grew out of northern Sámi and Japanese Ainu perspectives. Conceived by choreographer and researcher Marit Shirin Carolasdotter in 2017, Humans and Soil has since grown into a platform that dynamically balances performance, research and activism across international partnerships. We have already collaborated with several regions in Sápmi such as Västerbotten, where Norrlandsoperan has recognised the project’s support of their Indigenous culture through its creative activity.

In Dearnan Saemienskuvle, Tärnaby, we worked with Sámi youth, reintroducing them to storytelling through dance and jojk. These youth highlighted personal relationships to birthplace and homeland from their everyday life. We have listened to Ainu and Sámi elders’s stories, dreaming of reconnection through language and place, their longing for a cultural reinvigoration through dance and music, to be bequeathed even stronger to future generations.

Today, Humans and Soil continues listening carefully to Indigenous peoples’ stories, conducting relevant research, participating in, conducting and hosting seminars. Simultaneously, we continue embodying and generating change in Humans’ relationship to Earth; through movement-based multimodal creative expression and active engagement in local indigenous and global environmental issues.

Humans and Soil networks internationally in support of the revitalization and spread of the Indigenous relationship with Earth. Nevertheless, we remain committed to the indigenous traditions of integrity and consensus engagement while nurturing that revitalization through collaborative and participatory art.