Summer 1979. Recently graduated, 23-year-old schoolteacher Ester has moved to the northern Norwegian town of Alta to begin her career. Like many Saami - the native people of Scandinavia - Ester is ashamed of her heritage and conceals her ethnicity in order to blend in, to the great consternation of her mother. Yet where she wears this integration uneasily, her cousin Mihkkal openly embraces his roots, and its he who takes Ester to see a camp by the river where a group is demonstrating against the governments plan to build a hydroelectricity plant.