I too have met Kai Turi/Sunshine Featherstone/Kai Featherstone/Kai Raste Featherstone, and I liked him. I thought he was a very interesting person, a good musician, well-traveled, keenly intelligent, etc. He and his wife are into "back to the land" sort of existence, hunting, farming, natural living, gardening, etc. which I greatly admire! I'm not a pagan or new age in any way, but pagan and new age people don't bother me, as long as they don't judge my own beliefs. The first time I met his wife, however, she told me that (because I practice Christianity) that my ancestors had burned her ancestors to the stake, and how did I feel about that? That was not called for. At that time, she wasn't claiming Sami identity, but Swedish. As many of my ancestors are from Finland, there's a better chance that her ancestors had forcibly colonized and Christianized my people, since Finnish people were colonized by the Swedish people, given Germanic names, forcibly converting them to Christianity by the threat of the sword hundreds of years after the Swedes by and large gave up their ancient religion. Previously, the Finns practiced a religion very close to that of my Saami ancestors, as both are Finno-Ugric people as well, though the Saami are the only ones with indigenous status and Finland evolved into a western, agrarian society with a Swedish ruling class (and sometimes Russian). But I digress.
At some point, his wife began identifying as Saami. She did not believe she needed genealogy to do this. She thought going into some kind of trance through a ceremony(?) she retrieved the name and identities of her Saami ancestors. I have to say, the Saami community is very tolerant. People don't know what to do when people say things like this. On one hand, they try to be open to non-scientific experience and other ways of knowing. So it is difficult to call out this stuff as bunk. Kai's wife even offered to teach a workshop on ancestor name retrieval, but it didn't appear she was charging for it or that there were any takers. Most folks just nod their heads and divert the conversation
When I first met Kai, he claimed his great-grandmother was from Norway and she was going to immigrate to North America but got off the boat in England and ended up marrying into a local family. He claimed his family remained in touch with the family in Norway. I thought he would have other "Turi" facebook friends and associates, as 2nd cousins is a rather close relationship in Saami terms, but he doesn't seem to be associated with any of them. Then, later, I heard him claim his great-grandmother was from some other part of Sapmi. Now emj23's post says he claims now that his family left for England in the 1700s, which is a complete shift in stories. I've known other Americans who make nebulous claims about parents and/or grandparents being from Sapmi and once people get to know them, the stories change. On one level, I feel sorry for them, because they seem to need community so badly, it is difficult to reject them.
Also, because my Saami ancestry is a bit distant (great-great grandfather was part Saami) I feel like I am not the person to call out people on their level of Saami-ness. Maybe someone more Saami than I should do it, and it never seems to get done.
I have come to realize the Saami-American community operates a bit like the Basque associations in North America; anyone who can show or prove a Basque ancestor, has a Basque surname, is accepted as Basque regardless of blood quantum. We operate the same here in North America by accepting people with distant ancestry or those who seem sincere and whose stories seem plausible. They tend not to have much to gain by being Saami. No one in North America or Sapmi has never made me feel like I am not Saami enough to associate with other Saami, but knowing there are wanna-bees out there who make everyone else look bad makes me fearful. Some of the wanna-bees seem to want to whip up Saami clothing so they can go to pow-wows in them, without regard that Saami clothing is highly specific to family clan and region. On the other hand, Americans have left regions in Saamiland that have not had a dress tradition since the turn of the century or even earlier, and there's nothing contemporary in which one can model. But one can come to Native country with a sincere desire to help and to serve without dressing in indigenous clothing at all.
The sad thing, is, that regardless of whether they are indeed Saami, no one would have cared had they come around with their Swedish and Welsh identities. Everyone would have accepted Kai, his wife, and supported their interest in Saami people and they would have been invited to visit with Saami visitors and share in potlucks regardless if they were Saami or not.
When they were not calling people out, accusing people of things they didn't do to their ancestors or of beloved friends and elders of being Nazis, and claiming to be noaidi and other ridiculous tellings-off, I liked them both.
