Research Catalogue

Your Aspen Roots page is impressive and opens doors to many thoughts in slightly different areas. The reason I came to this and other pages of yours is the location by Lake Kitka. 

In her later years, my mother (from Northern Ostrobotnia and Coastal Lapland) started looking into her father's family both socially and genealogically, which among other things showed a family line from the Kuusamo area. A line that through church books could be followed in this area to the 1600s. Some way along it there should have been a poor man who was taken care of by the parish (I think), but most of my mother's papers have been at a friend of hers for years and just recently arrived at my sister's (in Sweden). Anyway, sitting in southern Norway, I already have copies from an earlier stage of my mother's family reasearch leading back to a Susanna Warg Määttä born in Vasaranperä 1797. A woman who later moved to Kempele (by Oulu) and got a family with a farmer, who already was married to a woman he had cildren with. I also found her in the not inlogged mode of My Heritage (Susanna Warg Määttä - Historiske poster og familietrær - MyHeritage), but whoever entered information here may mistakenly have seen the two families as one. 

A qualified guess about the origins of Sussanna's names, without having any real facts, is that Määttä comes from Karelians becoming Savonians, Kainuans, and eventually residents of the Kuusamo area, while the Warg (however it should be spelled) maybe is some kind of inherited military name.

The thight spot you and other non Sami (and low status Sami) with more or less Samish ancestry are in is intriguing. It reminds me of the situation between some Sea Sami and Mountain Sami I heard about while living along Finnmark's coast (in Norway). The former seeming (often hearing it directly from one of them) to be almost assimilated with Norwegians, and feeling looked down upon and disfavoured by the Mountain Sami community in spite of often being recognised as Sami. In Northern Sweden, there also seems to be thoughts about Forest Sami roots being overlooked (not least by the Sami) as well as a sorrow for a largely lost Finnish identity and language. Not living in northern Sweden, I sometimes imagine that I perceive them identifying with a North Swedish/northern identity recognising this region's diverse background regardless of the geneologi every single person might have personally.

Anyway, your pages are nice, and probably so for many audiences.