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Paper short abstract:

By exploring a museum exhibition “Ingrians – The Forgotten Finns”, the paper analyzes entanglements of objects, their histories, and narratives connected to them. It examines negotiations between minority and majority categories and issues related to heritagization of minoritized groups in general.

Paper long abstract:

Ingrian Finns are a Finnish-speaking historical minority of Russia and the Soviet Union. During Soviet terror in the early twentieth century, they went through forced collectivizations of farms, deportations, imprisonments, and executions. Simultaneously with the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the beginning of the 1990s, migration of Ingrian Finns to Finland started. History of Ingrian Finns is entangled with the history of Finland in many ways, and these entanglements give rise to various tensions as well as negotiations of belonging, entitlement, and representation of the past. This presentation analyzes the multimedia museum exhibition “Ingrians – The Forgotten Finns” created by Lea Pakkanen, Santeri Pakkanen, and Meeri Koutaniemi held at the National Museum of Finland in 2020. The exhibition showcased various material objects, photographs, narratives, and other media, reflecting its authors’ personal experiences as Ingrian Finns and allegedly collective experiences of Ingrian Finns as a group. The aim of this presentation is to discuss contemporary memory culture surrounding Ingrian Finns’ history by exploring entanglements of material objects and their histories as well various narratives connected to them. By exploring the exhibition, the presentation wishes to discuss negotiations between minority and majority categories and issues related to heritagization of minoritized groups in general.