Abstract
This article examines how legal processes shape the pursuit of just energy transitions, highlighting the judiciary's role in balancing climate goals, Indigenous rights, and environmental justice. While court cases can play a crucial role in enabling Indigenous peoples to assert their rights, the outcomes hinge on the judiciary's ability to understand the cultural and relational significance of Saami reindeer herding. Using courtroom ethnography, I observed the Øyfjellet wind power court case in the Saami reindeer herding district of Jillen Njaarke Sïjte. The article explores how Norwegian courts interpret and adjudicate culturally embedded claims to land and sustainability. Through a structural narrative analysis, the article identifies three interconnected narratives of temporal-hermeneutical injustice: establishing interpretive power through procedural exclusions, flattening relational Saami knowledge into administrative evidence, and marginalizing the ecological entanglements of land and herding routes. The analysis demonstrates how linear legal chronologies render Saami relationality legally unintelligible, perpetuating epistemic hierarchies. True justice requires reorienting collective interpretive resources to validate autonomous Indigenous temporalities, cosmologies, and onto-epistemologies, not as colonial contrasts but as sovereign frameworks. By positioning time as a structural site of power and resistance, this study advances scholarship on temporal-hermeneutical justice and energy transitions.
Keywords
Introduction
Indigenous 1 communities worldwide are increasingly using legal action to address violations of their fundamental human rights (Gilbert, 2020). This increase in litigation is part of a broader response to widespread land grabbing, exploitation of natural resources, and the ongoing failure of national governments to recognize Indigenous rights (Gilbert, 2020). Numerous Indigenous peoples experience a lack of legal protections and encounter inadequate political commitment from the majority to tackle these challenges, which could result in severe human rights violations. Consequently, many Indigenous advocates see litigation as one of the few remaining paths to attain justice. As noted by Gilbert (2020: 302), “It is not that these issues are new” what is new is the increased use of international and Norwegian law, “to push back against these violations.” Thus, it is essential to explore how court cases handle Indigenous peoples’ right to land in an ongoing surge of land grabbing.
The Øyfjellet wind power development, situated in Nordland county, Norway, is at the heart of a crucial reindeer migration route and the winter pasture of the Indigenous Saami reindeer herding of Jillen Njaarke Sïjte 2 (Fjellheim, 2023a). This area is of utmost importance to the southern Saami community (from here on “Jillen Njaarke”) as the practice of Båatsoe 3 is not just a livelihood but a vital part of preserving the southern Saami culture, which is protected by the Reindeer Herding Act (Fjellheim, 2023a; Ravna, 2020). In båatsoe, relationality is the starting point, highlighting the human interconnection with the cosmos and nature (Fjellheim, 2024). This relationship contrasts with current practices of appropriation and representation, which do not place humans at the center of understanding reality, and instead emphasize a profound relationship with nature, challenging the human/non-human divide (Fjellheim, 2024). The Saami reindeer herders today face numerous land encroachments associated with the Norwegian energy transition (Fjellheim, 2023a, 2023b; Kårtveit, 2021; Normann, 2021; Rønningen, 2024), thereby threatening the cultural survival of South Saami reindeer herding.
Previous research has examined power imbalances and resistance dynamics in wind power development, particularly with respect to the socio-environmental impacts on vulnerable rural communities (Batel et al., 2013; Dunlap, 2018; Normann, 2021; Siamanta and Dunlap, 2019). Within Saepmie, 4 studies have highlighted how these power asymmetries affect Saami reindeer herding, highlighting significant challenges for Indigenous communities asserting their rights against large-scale energy projects (Fjellheim, 2023a, 2023b; Johnsen et al., 2017; Lawrence and Larsen, 2017; Normann, 2021; Raitio et al., 2020; Ellingsen, 2024). In the Øyfjellet case, previous research underscores the epistemic injustice in the consultation processes between the Jillen Njaarke reindeer herding district and the Norwegian Water and Energy Directorate (NVE). Fjellheim, (2023a) notes that Indigenous knowledge was marginalized through strategic ignorance, highlighting the power imbalances and lack of respect for Indigenous rights. In the absence of agreement during the consultations, a legal dispute arose.
Øyfjellet was selected as the focus case for this study because it presents a critical opportunity to examine whether the landmark Fosen judgment, where the Norwegian Supreme Court found in 2021 that wind power development at Fosen had violated the Saami's right to culture under international law, has altered judicial practices at the district-court level. While the Supreme Court in Fosen clarified that wind power developments that significantly undermine reindeer herding can violate Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and render licenses invalid, Øyfjellet represents a subsequent large-scale wind power project in Saami reindeer herding areas, in which the district court nonetheless upheld the expropriation decision. More specifically, Øyfjellet is a particularly relevant case for tracing how temporal framings and hermeneutical gaps shape the practical implementation of Indigenous rights in the wake of Fosen, and for exploring whether state-driven linear progress overrides cyclical Indigenous temporalities.
This article advances understandings of Indigenous rights in energy development conflicts by showing how legal processes operationalize time as a site of power. Through the Øyfjellet court case, I trace the entanglement of hermeneutical injustice and temporal injustice, illustrating how these mutually reinforce one another in judicial assessments of Saami reindeer herding and land use. As the results underscore, court cases are not neutral or objective because they perpetuate several willful hermeneutical gaps (Pohlhaus, 2012) regarding Saami reindeer herding practices and the relational approach to land.
Wind power development in Jillen-Njaarke Sïjtes winter pastures
Over 12 days, the Helgeland district court in Mosjøen, Norway, was the center for a pivotal legal battle on wind power development in Jillen-Njaarke Sïjte's reindeer herding areas. Jillen-Njaarke is opposed to the development, as the Saami reindeer herding district believes that the concession and expropriation for the construction of a wind power industrial complex on Øyfjellet is invalid and infringes upon their cultural rights to practice Indigenous reindeer herding, according to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Article 27 (ICCPR, 1966).
The Øyfjellet project involves seventy-two wind turbines and associated infrastructure. During the licensing process, Jillen Njaarke raised concerns that the project could disrupt the traditional herding route and infringe upon the south Saami reindeer herding culture, protected by Article 27 of the ICCPR and the Reindeer Herding Act (Ravna, 2020). According to the Reindeer Herding Act, the Saami reindeer herding routes have specific protection (Act 15 June 2007 no. 40 on reindeer herding § 22). The paths taken by the reindeer and herders are divided into migration routes (trekkleier) and herding routes (flyttleier) (Risvoll et al., 2022), where the specific path is not always clearly defined and can vary from year to year depending on climatic conditions. The ability to move the reindeer between summer and winter pastures is crucial for sustaining the semi-nomadic practice that forms the foundation of Saami reindeer herding in Norway and is, therefore, essential for the Saami culture. In the Øyfjellet case, the wind turbines are in the middle of a crucial herding route, potentially disrupting the centuries-old tradition.
In 2016, Øyfjellet Wind AS was granted a license by the Norwegian Ministry of Oil and Energy (OED), despite Jillen Njaarke's concerns. However, the license was granted on the condition that Øyfjellet Wind AS would engage in dialogue with Jillen Njaarke to agree on measures to mitigate the project's impact. The case went into the legal system as an agreement was not reached. The construction of the wind turbines and roads began in the spring of 2020 while a pending appeal from local herding districts was still being processed in the court system (Kårtveit, 2021). Utilizing pre-accession in energy development projects has been a common practice, particularly when it was anticipated that specific legal or technical issues would be resolved in due course (Rønningen, 2024). It also highlights that the time frame centers on the urgent need for the Norwegian government to address climate change. In contrast, the time use of the Saami herders in these cases is not taken into account when developing infrastructure on Saami reindeer-herding territory (Ellingsen H.).
In 2021, the Norwegian state prosecutor joined Øyfjellet Wind's legal team, indicating the Norwegian government's interest in the case. This occurred despite the Petroleum and Energy Minister, Terje Aasland, asserting that the state remained a neutral party in the case (Helgalendingen, 2023). The court case was initially set to commence in May 2022. The developing company requested a last-minute postponement, which was granted. The court case was rescheduled for late May 2023. Subsequently, Jillen Njaarke requested another postponement, which was also granted. Thus, the trial began in late May 2024 and lasted three weeks. The Helgeland district court delivered its verdict on December 20, 2024, and Jillen Njaarke lost the case (NRK, 2024). Leader of Jillen Njaarke, Torstein Appfjell, immediately explained the outcome as expected: “I think that the understanding of reindeer herding is not present, and that is probably what we are seeing the result of now” (NRK, 2024).
Towards a temporal-hermeneutical (in)justice framework
Miranda Fricker (2007) defines hermeneutical injustice as a structural epistemic wrong in which individuals lack adequate collective interpretive resources to make sense of their experiences, particularly when they are marginalized. Such injustice arises from hermeneutical gaps, when dominant social schemas cannot render certain phenomena intelligible, especially under oppressive conditions in which the oppressed struggle to articulate their realities against prevailing norms (Fricker, 2007: 152). Building on this, Gail Pohlhaus (2012) introduces the concept of willful hermeneutical ignorance, emphasizing the agency of dominant actors in maintaining these gaps, even when confronted with marginalized epistemologies. While Fricker's account captures the limitations of interpretive frameworks, Pohlhaus underscores their active reproduction through epistemic resistance to plurality. Rauna Kuokkanen (2019) cautions that if such gaps are discussed without a structural analysis of power, they risk becoming depoliticized abstractions, detached from their colonial conditions of production. This emphasis on the colonial production and maintenance of interpretive gaps invites a shift from treating hermeneutical gaps as purely epistemic deficits toward understanding them as temporally structured effects of power and long histories of dispossession.
Temporal injustice, drawing on Goodin (2009), Huebener (2015), and Sharma (2013), describes the denial of temporal self-determination, where the capacity of communities to enact, sustain, and transmit their own temporal modes is denied. Goodin (2009) frames this as a violation of temporal autonomy, while Huebener (2015) shows how dominant institutions impose standardized temporal regimes that constrain alternative or Indigenous temporalities. Sharma (2013) adds that time itself operates as a cultural and political resource that is unevenly distributed, producing hierarchies of whose temporalities are recognized, accelerated, or erased.
In Indigenous–settler relations, these dynamics can converge, as time becomes a colonial instrument of intelligibility, organizing which knowledges appear “modern” and which are relegated to a “timeless” past. As Buhre and Bjork (2021: 227) observe, temporal rhetoric functions both as a mode of subjugation and a site of resistance. The imposition of linear “clock time” through colonial practices, education, labor, and land use (Freeman, 2022), not only enforces a singular temporality but also erases Indigenous relational temporalities that link past, present, and future in continuous becoming (Rifkin, 2017;Fjellheim, 2024; Vargas, 2021).
In this way, temporal injustice can thus produce hermeneutical injustice; if interpretive resources are shaped within dominant temporal schemas, then the erasure of Indigenous temporalities entails the erasure of interpretive legitimacy. Johannes Fabian's (1983) concept of the denial of coevalness captures this operation, showing how colonial hierarchies of time underpin hierarchies of knowledge. Ramos (2017: 8) similarly notes that positioning Indigenous peoples as living in a “different time” damages their epistemic agency. In courtroom or bureaucratic settings, where sites are organized by institutional chronologies, this denial can indicate that Indigenous understandings of cyclical, relational time are unintelligible to linear legal time. Dipesh Chakrabarty's critique of the historicist production of “homogeneous, empty time” (2000) further illuminates how legal-industrial institutions in settler states organize temporality as a universal, linear developmental frame. Connecting Chakrabarty to Fabian's (1983) “denial of coevalness” highlights how courts can enact a temporal hierarchy in which Indigenous modes of time are positioned as anachronistic or irrelevant to modern governance, thereby enabling both temporal and hermeneutical injustice.
Temporal-hermeneutical (in)justice, therefore, refers to those structural conditions through which dominant institutions, such as courts, control the temporal frameworks of intelligibility, thereby silencing alternative temporalities and their associated epistemologies. Addressing temporal justice, in this sense, means not merely reclaiming the right to one's own time, but restoring the interpretive capacity to make sense of that time within plural epistemic worlds. In contexts such as the Øyfjellet court case, this framework enables analysis of how Indigenous temporalities were marginalized throughout the court case and highlights the entanglement of time, knowledge, and power in the politics of (in)justice.
Method: Courtroom ethnography and data construction
The courtroom often functions as an arena where economic interests and traditional rights collide, particularly in legal disputes involving the Saami people (Fjellheim, 2023a). Courts both reflect and reproduce societal power relations, often disadvantaging Indigenous communities (Banaker and Travers, 2013; Flower and Klosterkamp, 2023). The Saami reindeer herders’ court cases, therefore, embody a duality: they can serve as tools of empowerment while simultaneously risking the reproduction of colonial hierarchies.
This study examines the epistemic and temporal inequalities entangled in the Øyfjellet case through a courtroom ethnographic approach (Flower and Klosterkamp, 2023). Such a methodology shows how legal framings, evidentiary hierarchies, and temporal logics structure Indigenous participation in law (Herbert, 2000). The Øyfjellet trial was live-streamed through the Helgeland District Court's website, positioning me as a “remote ethnographer” (Postill, 2016) during the first week. While this allowed real-time observation of procedural timings and discursive framings, the mediated format restricted access to embodied and relational aspects, nonverbal communication, informal exchanges, and affective atmospheres central to Saami experiences of the legal process.
To address these limits, I traveled to Mosjøen on June 2, 2024, to attend the second week in person. Physical presence generated forms of knowledge unavailable remotely, enabling observation of affective and relational dynamics within the courtroom. Fieldnotes captured nonverbal cues, such as visible discomfort among Saami herders, whispered joiks to steady nerves, and the judge's tonal shifts, alongside the community's interpretations of these exchanges. Informal conversations during breaks helped unpack how the Saami community read courtroom silences and moments of tension, making possible forms of triangulation that remote ethnography could not provide. These observations were essential for tracing what Pohlhaus (2012) terms “willful hermeneutical gaps”: structured silences that render Indigenous understandings partially unintelligible within state institutions.
Before the second week began, I was invited, through my affiliation with the Elsa Laula Renberg Institute (ELRI) research collective, to participate in a public panel on our work in ELRI on wind power conflicts in South Saepmie. This ensured that participants were aware of my research role and positioned me relationally rather than as an outsider observer. Introducing myself beforehand was an important ethical step that ensured transparency and established the necessary relational accountability before engaging with the court process.
During Jillen Njaarke's court testimony (June 2–4, 2024), I spoke with several herders from Jillen-Njaarke who were present in court but not testifying, and with Saami community members who were not testifying but present to show support for Jillen Njaarke. Following methodologies grounded in reciprocity and responsibility (Smith, 2012), fieldwork was oriented toward relational presence. Everyday settings, such as shared meals and informal gatherings, became spaces of co-interpretation rather than sites of data extraction, and these situated exchanges informed my understanding of courtroom testimony. These informal conversations contextualized the proceedings within broader family and land-use histories for me. Although unrecorded, these conversations were documented in detailed field notes and proved essential for interpreting the court testimonies. They underscored the emotional and temporal burdens of protracted legal disputes and the tacit understandings of land relations that are often silenced within legal discourse. Rather than treating ambient context as merely ethnographic background (Faria et al., 2020), these interactions are understood as epistemically productive moments that illuminate the affective and temporal layers of the Øyfjellet conflict. All insights were anonymized to protect participants opposing state-backed development, acknowledging the asymmetrical structure of the Saami–state relationship.
Courtroom observation was supplemented with analysis of media reports and official documents to situate legal dynamics within public and political discourse (Gilbert, 2020). Searches across national and regional outlets, NRK, Helgelendingen, and Ságat, using terms such as “Øyfjellet court case,” “Protect Sápmi,” and “Sami Reindeer Herders Association of Norway,” produced a diverse range of perspectives. Newspaper interviews with herding families from Jillen-Njaarke who were not testifying provided additional insight into collective understandings of justice, endurance, and loss. This combination of courtroom ethnography, relational engagement, and media analysis enabled a multilayered construction of data that is attentive to epistemic and temporal perspectives.
Structural narrative analysis
This study employs structural narrative analysis (Labov, 1982) where every testimony was treated as a story with six key parts: a preview (abstract), setting the scene (orientation), the main trouble or events (complicating action), the storyteller's personal take or emotional “why it matters” (evaluation), how it wraps up (resolution), and a bridge back to now (coda). This study applies it to Jillen Njaarke's courtroom testimony, showing how judges and lawyers interrupt these parts, making Saami relational time and epistemology legally invisible relative to straight-line industrial schedules.
The analysis process unfolded in three clear steps using fieldnotes from the eight-hour testimony session on June 4 (six witnesses in total that day), media coverage of the court case, and supplementary observations and informal conversations with people from the Saami community during breaks. First, I read through everything to identify story segments and gaps, jumbled settings from untranslated terms (rihrehke). Second, I organized these breaks into Labov's six parts, grouping patterns such as rushed endings (time compression) or dismissed feelings and knowledge (Pohlhaus, 2012). Third, I rebuilt the fractured stories into three main ones: (1) “Establishing Hermeneutical Power in the Courtroom,” (2) “Hermeneutical Gaps toward Saami Relational Knowledge,” and (3) “Ecological Entanglement of Land and Herding Routes.” Rebuilding these broken stories suggests how court timing may dismantle the very shape of Saami storytelling, not merely misunderstanding words, but potentially silencing Indigenous epistemologies at their structural core.
Ethical considerations
A hybrid courtroom ethnography helps alleviate research pressure on Saami reindeer herders, who face repeated interview requests, study participation, and media coverage during legal battles, leading to exhaustion and community fatigue (Fjellheim, 2023a,2023b; Normann, 2021). This observational approach yielded valuable insights without requiring direct involvement, thereby respecting community time and energy. Virtual and physical courtroom presence enabled analysis of the legal impacts on Saami Indigenous rights without additional burden. To minimize backlash risks against testifying herders, all referenced individuals are anonymized using common South Saami names. The Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research approved this study.
Results
Establishing hermeneutical power in the courtroom
This narrative traces how the court's structural decisions, removing the only Saami co-judge and compressing testimonies, shifted interpretive authority away from Indigenous temporalities toward industrial efficiency.
On the first day of the Øyfjellet Wind trial, May 27, 2024, the courtroom's tension was palpable. I watched as Thomas Kuhmunen, head of the Saltfjellet reindeer-herding district, was removed from the co-judge panel after Øyfjellet Wind's lawyers questioned his impartiality (NRK, 2024). Their objection rested on his prior legal involvement as a Saami reindeer herder in his own district, in a case concerning land encroachments on their reindeer herding routes. When the court accepted Øyfjellet Vind's argument, Kuhmunen was replaced by someone without Saami reindeer-herding experience, in an argument intended to enhance the court's impartiality. The National Reindeer Herders Association characterized Kuhmunen's removal as a legal scandal (NRL, 2024). During a break, I asked a member of the Saami community how Kuhmunen's removal might affect the trial. He replied that it would be difficult to find a Saami reindeer-herding co-judge whose grazing lands had not been subjected to land encroachments, given the sheer number of ongoing land-use cases in Saami territories.
In the courtroom, the consequences were immediate but subtle. By removing Kuhmunen, the court also removed the interpretive bridge needed to understand the complex cultural, temporal, and environmental logic that shapes Saami reindeer herding. Expertise that could have translated lived herding practices into juridical terms was suddenly missing. As I noted, this absence unsettled the courtroom's hermeneutical balance. The authority to define meaning within the court shifted toward those unfamiliar with the rhythms of Saami reindeer herding, resulting in interpretive silence during Jillen Njaarke's testimonies.
Later that day, I observed the effects of excluding the only Saami co-judge during Jillen Njaarkes’ testimony. Anta, a seasoned herder and community leader, was allotted two hours to explain how wind development threatened his livelihood. During a short recess, he told me that two hours could not possibly encompass the seasonal rhythms, landscape memories, and intergenerational knowledge that define reindeer herding. He believed the seriousness of the matter warranted a whole day to present his perspective, especially given the complex cultural and environmental issues involved in the case. Compressing that world into bureaucratic time stripped the testimony of context and depth. The court's temporal economy, defined by tight schedules and procedural efficiency, thus mirrored the earlier interpretive loss. Both the removal of Kuhmunen and the truncation of Anta's testimony narrowed what could be known and understood.
Hermeneutical gaps toward Saami relational knowledge
This narrative demonstrates how courtroom actors systematically flattened Saami relational herding knowledge into administrative evidence. Throughout the Øyfjellet trial, I observed that lawyers and judges translated Saami reindeer herding into administrative logics, reducing cyclical, relational knowledge into procedural evidence. As an expert witness, senior advisor Svein Ole Granefjell from the Saami-led foundation Protect Sápmi detailed how rotational herding patterns maintain ecological balance, citing research on Canadian caribou herds, which, while ecologically distinct from Nordic semi-nomadic reindeer herding, indicates that industrial activity becomes unsustainable when grazing areas are reduced by more than 35%. Protect Sápmi's assessment indicates that, in Jillen Njaarke, winter pasture has declined by up to 70% and summer pasture by up to 50% due to roads, cabin construction, power lines, and the Brønnøy lime industry (kalk).
Protect Sápmi sought to formalize their distinctive Saami expertise through an impact assessment and process agreement for compensation. Anta, a Jillen Njaarke herder, recounted: “It was a lengthy process because the developers did not agree with Protect Sápmi on how the impact assessment should be conducted.” To my knowledge, Protect Sápmi is unique in that it is the only foundation offering Saami reindeer herding expertise. Øyfjellet Wind AS explicitly declined to engage Protect Sápmi, citing a perceived lack of neutrality and characterizing Protect Sápmi as an advocacy-oriented group. The developers instead commissioned an alternative firm, overriding Jillen Njaarke's clear preference and sidelining Indigenous interpretive authority from the assessment process itself.
Moreover, later in the trial, the Øyfjellet Wind lawyers claimed that the winter pasture at the center of the case had been unused prior to the 2017 licensing for the wind power development. For Betty, also part of Jillen Njaarke, this argument aligns with her family history in the area. She told Vårt Land (2024) that she remembers her father moving through the area on skis in 1977, during reindeer relocation from this pasture and via Hundåla, close to where the wind power plant is now located: He was 70 years old then and enjoyed skiing with the bell reindeer during the move. I remember how happy and satisfied he was that this had gone so well. And then there is an Oslo man standing in court and saying that my family has never been there (…) I just had to turn to father up there and say: I am crying now, father, because they are now saying that what you did in 1977 did not happen (…). (translated from Norwegian by the author)
Throughout the day, I observed discussions concerning potential sites for relocating the reindeer on Øyfjellet, including an evaluation of whether the ice on Lake Hundålvatnet was safe for the herd to cross. A previous assessment commissioned by Øyfjellet Wind had concluded that the reindeer could easily traverse the lake. However, Sven Ole Granefjell, senior advisor at Protect Sápmi, challenged this conclusion based on his observations of Jillen Njaarke's migratory practices. He argued that the stability of the ice in Hundålvatnet is inconsistent and is increasingly undermined by ongoing climatic changes. From his perspective, this variability underscores Øyfjellet's growing importance as both a pasture and a gathering area, as shifting ice conditions are likely to render Hundålvatnet a less viable migration route between summer and winter pastures in the future. Granefjell's reflections highlight a broader structural challenge in reindeer husbandry: the need for adaptive capacity and access to alternative grazing areas amid environmental uncertainty (Benjaminsen, 2022). In this context, flexibility functions not only as a practical necessity but as a strategic form of resilience for the Saami reindeer herders amid accelerating climate change. Previous research has framed this as the double burden (Normann, 2021), describing how Saami reindeer herders must contend with environmental changes that affect their herding practices and the additional pressure of land-use conflicts driven by large-scale industrial projects.
Moreover, the patterned dismissal of Saami reindeer knowledge resurfaced in the cross-examination of Svein Morten Eilertsen from the Norwegian Institute for Bioeconomy. Eilertsen was called in as an expert witness for Jillen-Njaarke, as he had worked with the herding district back in 2007 to create the registration base for the number of reindeer in the district based on grazing areas, climate, and other conditions. Asked why he had trusted Anta, a Saami herder, as an informant, lawyer for Øyfjellet Wind, Ivana Filipovic pressed whether Eilertsen's conclusions rested “on Anta's opinion or his expertise as a researcher,” given that, as a Saami reindeer herder, Anta must have particular interests in forwarding his version, to which Eilertsen replied: To put it this way, the knowledge of moving reindeer past the Brønnøy lime mining area comes from the lived experience of Saami reindeer herders. I have not had to manage reindeer in that area, so it is only natural that the explanation should come directly from the herders, who have firsthand experience in these conditions. Filipovic: Is it the case that these conclusions are based on Anta? Eilertsen: On experience based on relocation, yes, but not on climate change. (translated from Norwegian by the author)
Later that day, during the courtroom testimony of Anta and Mikkel from Jillen Njaarke, the crucial hermeneutical gap regarding the development of Saami reindeer herding and the forced use of helicopters to navigate the herd through the wind power construction zone, which lies between summer and winter pastures, came to the fore. As an ethnographer observing the proceedings, I noted that Anta, the first witness from Jillen-Njaarke, articulated this disruption not as a matter of logistics but as an ontological rupture characterized by violence. Anta testified: We have had to use violence; if violence does not work, then more violence is needed. It is a different philosophy than ours (…). Violence is not justifiable on animal welfare grounds. It is not in the Saami spirit nor the spirit of reindeer husbandry. (…) They perceive us as aggressors, as a predator. They start to mistrust the herder and our intentions, and thus, the trust between us is broken. (translated from Norwegian by the author) If we distance ourselves from the Saami way of doing herding, we move away from the relationship of trust. (translated from Norwegian by the author) Mikkel, another herder from Jillen Njaarke, extended this relational ontology: We lose trust with the animals, we lose trust from nature, and we lose trust in the authorities. (translated from Norwegian by the author)
Ecological entanglement of land and Saami herding routes
This narrative highlights how Saami testimonies position rihrehke (herding routes) as living arteries that connect land, reindeer, and cultural continuity. As Anta testified on June 4, he explained Jillen Njaarke's pasture rotation: The lichen that the reindeer eats grows slowly; it can take 30 years before it grows back. (translated from Norwegian by the author)
When Mikkel testified in court that day, he emphasized the importance of the herding route to and from the winter pasture, where the wind turbines are located. Mikkel grew up in a reindeer-herding family and received his first reindeer as a small child. He learned reindeer herding throughout his childhood, and at 17, he started working full-time at Jillen Njaarke. He has been involved in Southern Sami reindeer herding for 40 years.
Mikkel took the stand without an interpreter, palms folded in his lap: “How do I explain rihrehke?” The term hung untranslated as judges looked at Mikkel. The term remained untranslated to me until later in Mikkels’ testimony; it became clear that a rihrehke has a cultural meaning beyond what the word “flyttlei” can capture. Mikkel describes the rihrehke as the main artery for the Southern Sami reindeer herding: If we lose the main artery, if it gets blocked, then the reindeer herding withers away. (translated from Norwegian by the author)
A Saami herding route, rihrehke, is directly translated to Norwegian as “en flyttlei.” However, during Mikkels’ testimony, it became clear that certain aspects of Saami reindeer herding are not necessarily translatable from Southern Saami into Norwegian without accompanying cultural explanation. As the core issue of the court case is the importance of a herding route in Saami reindeer herding practice, the cultural meaning of this route is essential to understanding what is at stake for the Saani reindeer herders in the court case. In his testimony, a senior advisor at Protect Sápmi, Granefjell, explained to the court that a herding route is vital for grazing. During the winter, the reindeer is in survival mode and is not in the best shape when it moves to the summer pasture. Therefore, a herding route is particularly important during the preparation period leading up to calving.
On that day in court, no interpreter was present, so although all explanations were provided in Norwegian, many terms essential to Southern Saami reindeer herding lacked direct translations. This created immediate communication challenges, as critical cultural concepts could not be accurately conveyed. For instance, words that describe specific Saami herding techniques or seasonal practices do not exist in Norwegian, which could lead to incomplete understanding among the judges. This situation illustrates how cultural and linguistic differences can influence judicial outcomes.
Discussion
The analysis of the Øyfjellet trial demonstrates how Jillen-Njaarke's testimonies expose three narratives in which the temporal denial of Saami coevalness generates hermeneutical gaps (Fricker, 2007), rendering relational Saami knowledge legally unintelligible. These narrative patterns highlight how courts function as active sites of epistemic exclusion, a dynamic that resonates with and extends Fjellheim's (2024) findings on the Norwegian judiciary's role in perpetuating power asymmetries against Saami herders, with profound implications for energy transitions and epistemic justice.
First, the removal of the sole Saami co-judge, Thomas Kuhmunen, raises questions about how procedural decisions can establish hermeneutical power within the dynamics of temporal-hermeneutical injustice. This move potentially shifted interpretive dominance toward Øyfjellet Wind and Norwegian state actors, thereby limiting the “collective interpretive resources” available to understanding Saami cyclical temporalities such as båatsoe and rihrehke (Fricker, 2007). Kuhmunen's disqualification may have eliminated a critical epistemic bridge that could render these relational practices intelligible within juridical schemas, suggesting that Pohlhau’s (2012) willful hermeneutical ignorance operates at the institutional scale as a structural foreclosure of alternative knowledge. Without a Saami co-judge, the proceedings unfolded in what Fricker (2007) terms a space of hermeneutical injustice, where specific experiences cannot be adequately understood because interpretive resources are structurally excluded.
Anta's testimony, constrained to “two hours,” appears to have compressed 30-year lichen cycles and seasonal rhythms into bureaucratic fragments (Pohlhaus, 2012). The literature on courts and temporality, such as Soennecken (2013), highlights the ongoing conflict between the administrative push for efficiency and the imperative to ensure procedural justice. This tension arises as courts are pressured to expedite cases, prioritizing speed over thorough legal examination. In the case of Jillen Njaarke, the brief time allocated for their testimonies risks perpetuating these hermeneutical gaps, as limited testimony time may prevent judges from fully understanding the critical cultural and environmental nuances involved. Without the opportunity for deeper engagement, the court may inadvertently reinforce structural ignorance, leading to decisions that fail to account for the lived realities of Saami reindeer herders. This can potentially undermine the fairness of legal proceedings, where time constraints hinder the full articulation and recognition of Indigenous knowledge and concerns.
Second, rejecting Protect Sápmi's 70% pasture-loss documentation raises concerns about epistemic injustice in climate adaptation, where Indigenous expertise risks dismissal as “non-neutral” despite their specialized knowledge (Byskov and Hyams, 2022). Developers appear to have sidelined Protect Sápmi's impact assessment, positioning it as advocacy rather than the sole Saami-led assessment body, while dismissing pre-2017 pasture use, such as Betty's herding memory from 1977, that seems to contradict claims of “unused” land. Eilertsen's explanation of Jillen Njaarkes’ “lived experience” was subjected to cross-examination by the state prosecutor, who framed Eilertsen as inherently biased. This pattern may suggest how untranslated rihrehke, Mikkel's “main artery” linking past-present-future, remains epistemically inert without coeval interpretive frameworks, transforming ecological entanglements into mere logistical considerations (Vargas, 2021). Such dynamics can be conceived as a form of temporal erasure, in which situated Saami knowledge struggles for legal visibility against industrial timelines (Whyte, 2017). The trial's outcome, where herders lost and appealed (NRK, 2024), underscores this.
Moreover, the absence of a competent interpreter raises questions about how courtroom epistemology extends beyond linguistics and may perpetuate injustice. Oral traditions and knowledge-sharing practices are vital for Saami reindeer herders, underscoring the need for Jillen Njaarke to have adequate time to convey their trust in the reindeer and their relationship with nature. This highlights a temporal injustice associated with the cultural dimensions of traditional knowledge sharing in Saami society. Kirsti Strøm Bull (2022) further notes that the Norwegian authorities’ comprehension of Saami relations is often based on written sources and prevailing legal opinions, complicating the Saami's ability to determine what should be translated and what should remain unchanged. The lack of an interpreter during court testimony can exacerbate this issue; when Mikkel testified in both Southern Saami and Norwegian, the absence of interpretation may have prevented the judges from fully understanding the cultural significance of his words. Language barriers may serve as surface manifestations of deeper epistemic challenges, in which adequate representation within existing frameworks may not fully resolve hermeneutical injustices entangled in juridical ontology (Mitova, 2024). An interpreter might convey words, but grasping the temporal epistemology of “migration follows mountain rhythms” likely requires cultural understanding to recognize its tension with industrial timelines. Retaining a Saami co-judge might have provided a stronger bridge to cultural understanding of båatsoe and rihrehke. Without this cultural and temporal translator, judges and herders arguably occupied different temporal planes, echoing Fabian's (1983) denial of coevalness, as also seen in the discussion about the use of a helicopter.
These dynamics position Øyfjellet within ongoing global debates about Indigenous rights and extractivism (Dunlap and Jakobsen, 2020; Fjellheim, 2024; Sultana, 2022; Zografos and Robbins, 2020), in which courts may function as epistemic excluders that enable temporal injustice. My analysis indicates that addressing these injustices requires more than policy reform; it calls for a reorientation of collective interpretive resources. Countries with colonial legacies must recognize and address the hermeneutical ruptures that sustain epistemic hierarchies (Shields, 2023), while supporting the coexistence of multiple times and relations to the land (Valkenburg, 2022). In this way, epistemic justice depends on validating Indigenous temporalities as autonomous and authoritative, rather than as merely oppositional critiques of colonial time.
Critically, these findings show that the landmark Fosen verdict (2021) had evidently little impact in the Øyfjellet case, both in the court's procedural treatment of Saami co-judge Thomas Kuhmunen and in the outcome, in which Jillen Njaarke lost and appealed. In the Øyfjellet case, courtroom procedures, evidentiary standards, and industrial planning timelines presuppose this homogeneous temporality (Chakrabarty, 2000).
Conclusion
This article has traced how temporal and hermeneutical injustices co-produce challenges in the Øyfjellet court case, in which the Helgeland District Court, from removing Saami co-judge Thomas Kuhmunen to rendering rihrehke as an administrative “flyttlei,” sustained interpretive gaps that marginalize Saami relational temporalities. Through hybrid courtroom ethnography capturing compressed testimonies, untranslated terms, and ecological entanglements, the analysis has highlighted the courts’ role in structuring epistemic asymmetries amid energy transitions. These findings advance temporal justice scholarship by showing how linear chronologies deny coevalness to cyclical herding practices.
Remedying these injustices requires reorienting interpretive resources to affirm Indigenous temporalities and cosmologies on their own terms. By reconstructing Jillen Njaarke's narratives of trust, lichen regrowth, and herding routes, this study supports efforts toward temporal sovereignty, where plural onto-epistemologies coexist as equals. Genuine epistemic justice emerges only when such agency holds equal interpretive authority. For scholars and policymakers alike, this recognition creates an ethical obligation to question whose futures are prioritized in energy transitions and to center Indigenous ways of knowing as integral to justice in energy transitions.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Jillen Njaarke for generously sharing their knowledge with me. My thanks also go to the anonymous reviewers and editors whose thoughtful and insightful feedback strengthened this work. I am deeply grateful to my supervisors—Professor Espen Moe, Dr Katrina Rønningen, and Dr Susanne Normann—for your guidance, encouragement, and constructive input throughout this process. Finally, a warm thank you to Dr Eva Maria Fjellheim for inviting me along on the journey with Elsa Laula Renberg's Institute. Your support has meant a great deal.
Ethical approval and informed consent statements
Sikt, the Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research, approved the study.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The Research Council of Norway funds this study through the project “Development of Collaborative Approaches to Civic Renewable Energy for Sustainable Rural Development and Land Use (CIVIC Renewables)” [grant number: 320812].
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Data availability
Data are provided within the manuscript or supplementary information files.