Jelena Sergeyevna Semyjashkina was born in Loparskaya, Soviet Union in 1967, the same rural locality she grew up in on the Kola Peninsula,[1] in the Kildin Saami area.

[1] In the Soviet Union, the ideal of equality was so strong that cultural background was destroyed, and teaching in Sami had been banned since the 1930s.

[1] In 1998, Porsanger began working as an associate professor at the Center for Sami Studies at the University of Tromsø.

Her research on oral and written sources of the Eastern Sami indigenous religion from the 16th to the 20th centuries led to her doctoral dissertation, "Bassejoga čáhci": Gáldut nuortasámiid eamioskkoldaga birra álgoálbmotmetodologiijaid olis (Indigenous Methodology), which she defended at the University of Tromsø in January 2006.

She was subsequently employed at the Sámi University of Applied Sciences in Kautokeino, where, since 2010, she has led a research project for the development of methodology, documentation, preservation, protection and storage of Årbediehtu (traditional Sami knowledge).