is nothing shameful about being a Sami. It is instead a strength.” Despite knowing only one other young Ume Sami speaker, Hugo is taking lessons in his spare time on top of his school studies.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hugo Lundgren says Sami language and identity is no longer a source of shame. Photograph: Pete Stovin

Katarina describes how this strength is being channelled into a “cultural explosion” in Sami art, music and film. She is currently recording her first album using Ume Sami lyrics and influences from the traditional Sami Yoik.

Amanda Kernell is a young Sami filmmaker whose latest short Stoerre Vaerie (Northern Great Mountain) has been shortlisted for 2015 Sundance Film Festival. The film uses Sami actors, sections of Sami dialogue, and is the first-ever Sami film to compete1920s and 1930s, and what she describes as an apartheid-style education system.

The story feels like an elegy to those who left their Sami identity behind and reincarnated as Swedish. Yet the film is also about atonement, symbolised by the use of language. The death of the main character’s sister forces her to confront a heritage that by “becoming Swedish” she has long denied. In one moving scene at the wake, the woman whispers, “I’m sorry” in Sami into her ear of her dead sister.

Language revitalisation

Young Samis are lifting the lid on the painful experiences of previous generations and increasingly ready to speak their mother tongue without shame. But with few speakers, fewer teachers and levels of funding that Susanne describes as “absolutely ridiculous”, there are still huge practical