Finland's great Sámi showdown: a question of LARPing
The Sámi issue has many sides - but fundamentally, it's a question about identities.
The Finnish government has spent most of the last weeks squabbling about a topic that is obscure even in Finland – Sámi issues. Most Finns, of course, know about the Sámi, ‘EU’s only indigenous nation’. When it comes to the actual political affairs concerning Sámi, however, the common Finnish reaction is akin “I’m not touching that with a 3.048-meter pole”. I don’t know much about the topic, either, not having grown up in Lapland. This obviously needs fixing. I’ve tried to learn more about it by reading a fair bit of stuff concerning the topic. Here’s an overview.
WHO ARE THE SÁMI?
The Sámi are an indigenous nation in the northern regions of Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Russia, stereotypically thought of as nomadic reindeer herders, though of course these days working in numerous modern professions. There’s a total of ca 60 000-100 000 Sámi, most living in Norway. Approximately 10% of the Sámi live in Finland.
The Sámi generally differ from the national populations of these countries by culture and language, there being 9 living Sámi languages, three of which (Northern Sámi, Inari Sámi, and Skolt Sámi) are spoken in Finland. These also correspond to distinct Sámi peoples, though due to assimilation not all Sámi speak Sámi languages as their primary language. The Sámi have extensive cultural markers; joik style singing, distinctive costumes including the gákti coat etc.
Naturally there are also differences; for instance, the Skolt Sámi, who originally inhabited the Petsamo (Pechengsky) area conquered by Russia in 1944, are Orthodox and have their own system of internal governance. The Skolts do not feature extensively in this affair, and thus won’t be discussed more than this.
Sámi languages are Finno-Ugric, like Finnish. Linguistically they’re closer to Finnish than, say, Hungarian, but still fully mutually unintelligible with Finnish unlike, say, Estonian. The ancestral population giving this language to Finns and the Sámi arrived to area ca 3500 years ago, mixing and matching with previous populations. Sámi used to live in a far larger area than now, but the current formal ‘Sámi territory’, or the Finnish part of the general Sámi area Sápmi, now consists only of a few northern municipalities.
The Finnish Sámi have an organ called Sámediggi (in Northern Sami, the biggest of Sámi languages), the Sámi Parliament, that is funded by the Finnish state and is empowered to conduct activities for sustaining and bolstering Sámi languages and culture; there are similar organs in Sweden and Norway, though not in Russia. However, their powers are rather limited.
(This is a barebones, Wikipedia-style definition, and even this much is not necessarily accepted by all factions in the debate. There exists a claim to a fourth Finnish Sámi nation, Forest Sámi, or Kemi Sámi. We’ll come to that later)
SO, WHAT MAKES THEM INDIGENOUS? AREN’T ALL EUROPEAN NATIONS INDIGENOUS TO EUROPE?
Anyone who has spent any time looking into indigenous issues will of course soon realize that the concept of “indigeneity”, as commonly used, is more than just being a people that has lived in some region for a long time. The concept of “Indigenous nation” is, in short, connected to European colonialism, the conquest of the New World and all that; the whole idea of terra nullius led to a process which, stereotypically at least, did not led to the inclusion of the conquered nationalities to the new colonial societies rather than the colonial societies being built on, around and despite them.
Thus, there was later a push for specific forms of governance taking this process into account by countries like US, i.e., the various tribal agreements and governance processes; essentially, “indigenous nations” are those considered to be in a similar position to Native Americans, Australian Aborigines etc.
Are the Sámi in such a position? Well, their northern lands were some of the last lands in Europe to be brought under regular state authority (taxation etc.), this took place during the general age of colonization with similar dynamics like assimilation and various land fights, they do indeed form minorities in their traditional areas of living due to the settlement of those areas by peoples from down south, their livelihoods were until recently nomadic or seminomadic etc. There is indeed a comparison to be made.
Of course, their situation is not completely analogous to Native Americans in United States – one large difference would be that all sides acknowledge there has been considerable intermarriage and mixing between Finns and Sámi, with many northern Finns having considerable Sámi blood and many Sámi families likewise possessing Finnish ancestry.
Perhaps most importantly, the governments of Finland, Sweden, and Norway themselves discuss the Sámi as indigenous and acknowledge themselves as such in some way – though only Norway has signed the ILO 169 convention on indigenous rights. As such, it’s small wonder that Sámi themselves have easily seen themselves as analogous to many other conquered nations; both sides of this ongoing affair frequently refer to indigenous rights to bolster their views.
WHAT’S THE ONGOING AFFAIR?
The Sámi issue is the consistency of the voter rolls of Sámi Parliament. However, behind this issue are wider questions of Sámi ethnicity, Sámi relations to the Finnish government and Finnish nation, and concept of indigeneity itself.
Basically, Sámi Parliament maintains a separate voter roll of people who can participate in electing the Sámi Parliament. There are currently ca 6000 people in this voter roll. The concept originally used for drawing up the voter rolls was speaking a Sámi language as your first language or having a parent of a grandparent speaking one.
Later, an additional criterion was added – the so-called “Lapp paragraph”, stating that someone that could demonstrate their ancestor had been marked as a “Lapp” in state tax registers they could be potentially added to the rolls. “Lapp” used to be the word used to describe either Sámi or reindeer herders/nomads in the Northern/Eastern territories in general; in modern parlance it tends to be considered a slur.
It’s this paragraph that is the source of the main controversy, with the majority of Sámi Parliament advocating for a new law regulating Sámi Parliament removing the Lapp paragraph. At first it wasn’t that controversial, since there was an implicit understanding that this paragraph would not be used for cases where “Lapps” have been registered prior to 1875, as it was considered that after that the livelihoods had settled well enough.
However, in recent decades the Finnish courts have adjudicated cases where people had sued to get to the voter rolls on the basis of farther-reaching “Lapp” ancestry, and some hundreds of people have thus been added to the voter rolls. Others are clamoring for entry – such as the representatives of a group claiming themselves to be “Forest Sámi” or “Kemi Sámi”, a fourth Sámi grouping. Some other issues exist, but the Lapp paragraph is basically the central question.
The Sámi parliament majority supporting the removal of the paragraph (13 out of 21 Sámi Parliament representatives) is supported by the Finnish left, forming the majority of the Finnish government, and the Swedish People’s Party, which similarly represents a linguistic minority.
However, an oppositional faction in Sámi Parliament (8 out of 21 members), along with the center-right governmental party Centre (and all the MPs from Lapland, from the left to right), oppose this, and a possibility exists of the entire government falling if these parties remain at loggerheads over the Sámi Parliament reform.
WHAT’S THE LARGER ISSUE, ACCORDING TO SÁMI PARLIAMENT MAJORITY FACTION?
According to the Sámi Parliament majority, this is a conflict between Sámi indigenous self-governance and a group of anti-Sámi Finns who wish to take over the Sámi Parliament, supported by the Finnish courts. (Note: this view is also the one that you can read more about in English in, say, this article or this one.)
To Sámi Parliament majority, who is Sámi and who is not is clear – the North Sámi, Inari Sámi and Skolt Sámi are Sámi, while the “Forest Sámi” or “Kemi Sámi” are quite evidently not Sámi at all. The Kemi Sámi might have once existed as a language but has long since gone extinct. The current "Kemi Sámi" claimants are then a group of mostly Finnish settler origin who have essentially created an identity to themselves out of whole cloth by portraying common Lapland ‘Sámi-style’ work jackets as gákti etc.) in collective Rachel Dolezal style.
Why? Well, either because they feel themselves distinct from other Finns due to their life in the hardscrabble North, or for devious purposes, believing that taking over Sámi Parliament would give them power over the considerable land use questions in Lapland. The Sámi parliament doesn’t have formal powers over land issues, but has an advisory role, and there has been a push to grant it a more extensive status.
The issue in question then becoming urgently recreating the voter rolls without the “Lapp paragraph”, i.e., utilizing a language-based criteria, even extending it to cover ever great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents. In the majority’s claim, the “Lapp paragraph” has never really recorded cases of Sámi identity. Rather, it has been an economic moniker assigned to those working with reindeer or otherwise living a non-farming lifestyle, without reference to ethnicity.
Generally, theSámi Parliament majority considers this a straightforward case. Reforming the voter rolls without the Lapp paragraph, implicitly removing the wrongly added people, would protect indigenous rights and self-governance, bring the definition to the same standard as used in Sweden and Norway. It would also prevent LARPers from exercising their power to take over Sámi Parliament to essentially defang and implicitly assimilate the one institution working for Sámi culture and language.
In the Sámi Parliament majority’s view the actual Sámi are greatly united, apart from individual oppositionists who have their own reasons for contrarianism and who are bolstered by votes of the non-Sámi Finns already wrongly added to the voter rolls. The Sámi Parliament’s defenders say that they’re not against anyone learning a Sámi language, self-identifying as Sámi etc. – but this doesn’t require being on voter rolls, which is a whole different matter.
To the majority, the Finnish government’s inability to resolve this issue by passing the reform is a case of conscious foot dragging, in hopes that eventually the Sámi Parliament constituency changes lead to a new more pliant Sámi Parliament majority. This, then is considered to serve the interests of landowners in Lapland, who do not want the indigenous people of the land interfering with land use rights, particularly ones that might prevent lucrative but polluting mining development. A quite important point is UN’s opinion on this issue, admonishing Finland for not passing the Sámi Parliament reform act.
WHAT’S THE LARGER ISSUE, ACCORDING TO OPPONENTS OF SÁMI PARLIAMENT MAJORITY?
This is much harder to piece together – unsurprising, since there seem to be many different minority viewpoints here, they tend to be advocated by, shall we say, dissident types that may often get rather fervent about their views and don’t seem to have the same resources as Sámi Parliament to make easy-to-read materials.
To the opposition, the whole topic is not as much a conflict between Sámi and Finns but one between different Sámi groups, riven apart by the actions of a small, elite radical Sámi nationalist faction, representing the dominant Northern Sámi interests, ruling the Sámi Parliament. At the very least, the opposition believes that Inari Sámi voices are not being heard – unless they are pliant to the Northern Sámi majority, that is.
The claim is that Northern Sámi elites ruling Sámi Parliament – indeed, who formed it as a pressure group which then gained official recognition as the representative of the Sámi – represent large-scale reindeer herding interests. This was then also supported by the states, because it’s easier to tax large-scale reindeer herding than hunting/fishing/gathering/small-scale farming and herding style living that (according to this view) had thus far characterized life in Finnish Sámi territories.
In this view, the more southern, originally Finnish Sámi groups have (naturally, due to settlement) gone through extensive assimilation, language death etc. and thus seem “less Sámi” to outsiders. Thus, for instance, the claim is such assimilated groups were not properly recorded in the 1962 “Sámi census”, which has later been used to settle the various criteria issues.
To the opponents, the Lapp paragraph has been essential for finding missing cases of Sámi-dom, since proving an ancestral language is considerably harder and such languages haven’t been sufficiently registered anywhere. Furthermore, particularly the more moderate oppositionists refer to the fact that voter roll additions haven’t happened solely on the basis of Lapp paragraph but a more extensive review of Sámi-ness.
Furthermore, in this view, Sámi Parliament is an organ of Northern Sámi hegemony over other groups, and the whole process of ‘cleansing the lists’ is meant to remove inconvenient, popular Inari Sámi oppositionists from the rolls. This, then, would prevent their hegemony from being disrupted electorally. As such, they make the claim to being the true protectors of indigenous rights. The UN’s statement otherwise is simply a result of extensive lobbying by radical nationalists, and not as binding anyway as claimed.
The question of how legit the Kemi Sámi seemingly are controversial even among the oppositionists, and the general legal argumentation concentrates on the voter roll removals affecting the Inari Sámi members currently in the rolls; furthermore, there seems to exist a controversy about whether the planned voting system (too complex for me to really understand) treats Inari Sámi fairly and so on.
Nevertheless, some view the ‘Forest Sámi’ as an actual group, formed by descendants of assimilated families who have nevertheless maintained some parts of their traditions, like keeping around gákti, having memories of Sámi being used in their past, and so on. Moreover, in this view, the group “Forest Sámi, when properly viewed, would also include Inari Sámi and the Skolt Sámi, though the first group is divided and the Skolt Sámi are tactically allied to the ruling faction.
Voices from the opposition’s side even claim that the Northern Sámi are not indigenous to Finnish land, but rather migrants from the currently Norwegian areas, pushing the native Sámi groups aside. Thus, in this view, there's also a land issue - but it's the one of Northern Sámi claiming lands from other Sámi for their huge reindeer herds.
CURRENT STATUS OF THE DRAMA
The government’s program included a mention that the government will advance the Sámi Parliament reform, interpreted as a mandate to pass a reform law during this period. There exists a committee proposal for a reform law without the Lapp paragraph, but the actual process has been extended several times, of course, the government has had a lot on its plate with COVID and Ukraine, so it’s not surprising many other questions would take a backseat.
Now the time is running out, the government’s period ends next Spring and a failure to bring the law to the Parliament now might just mean there’s simply not enough time to process all of this democratically. The Centre party is refusing to advance the law without the Lapp paragraph and asking for still more time to discuss it – stalling for time, other parties claim.
PM Marin has promised to nevertheless bring the law to the parliament, leading to a potential situation where the government parties would vote against each other, which would of course be bad, possibly fatal, to the government’s stability. The issue is supposed to be settled for good by Thursday, so we have yet to see how it will go.
CONCLUSION
Well, it’s obviously a complex issue, pretty much beyond my pay grade, really. Perhaps the best summary is that both sides leave me with suspicions, often based on their own materials. I’ve also heard from various sources near the situation – often not ones that are quite willing to comment publicly – that the conflict between North Sámi and Inari Sámi is more real than the Parliament claims.
To learn more about the Sámi Parliament’s view, a book I read defending their view and heavily promoted by their activists written by a North Sámi professor) also discussed the Inari Sámi in a way that seemed to concentrate mostly on their assimilation and “Finnishness”, and thus gave the impression that there might indeed a certain assumed hierarchy and division in the Sámi groups, here, or at least more so than the people claiming the Sámi are fundamentally united around the reform are claiming.
However, having read a bit about indigenous issues in other countries, like the US, there have indeed recently been a lot of chances where individuals have ‘suddenly’ discovered indigenous heritage - sometimes for reasons with obvious immediate benefits (ie. affirmative action for studies and so on), sometimes on the basis of family mythology or some quest for identity, the matter of identity issues being what it is these days.
Thus, it is perfectly possible for me to imagine the same dynamics playing up Finnish North. With small, stateless communities like the Sámi, some guardianship over such questions of identity is needed, with strict categories of who belongs and who doesn’t. The ‘Forest Sámi” activists really give the sort of a feeling I’d guess one generally get would from guys whose identity is not on a particularly stable ground and might very well indeed be engaging in some sort of an extended LARP.
So, overall I guess I sympathize more with the Sámi Parliament majority view. This is a ‘vibes-based’ view, so to say, but it’s obvious to me there’s too much stuff that goes very deep into cultural aspects I don’t share to fully understand the matter. In those cases, there’s often little to fundamentally trust expect vibes.
I'm not sure where you got the 3500 years-ago figure, but as an estimate of when (Proto-)Saami-speaking people first arrived at where they're currently living, it's probably quite a bit too early according to the most recent well-argued positions. See, in particular:
An essay on Saami ethnolinguistic prehistory
LSS Ánte - A linguistic map of prehistoric Northern Europe, 2012. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/download/46465125/An_Essay_on_Saami_Ethnolinguistic_Prehistory.pdf
Very interesting stuff on many fronts.
A lot this early population history is still quite unclear, but more genetic evidence may still come up. Obviously, it might also complicate the picture — as it actually has already with the perplexingly old Uralic/Saami-*looking* findings near the Kola peninsula (Bolshoy Oleni Ostrov), which don't fit the story of the origins of the languages but might be relevant for the speculation around the evidence for Saami assimilation of pre-existing people in the North...
Anyway, I briefly tried to delve into this issue some years ago, as well. I've forgotten a lot, but I do recall that the claim that more large-scale reindeer-herding is a relatively recent introduction in a lot of Finnish Lapland sounded quite convincing. And indeed I think there was some Norwegian (or Finnish?) border control related reason for a lot of reindeer-herding Northern Saamis to move their herds here on a more permanent basis around the 1800s or so. Hard to convince with such poor recollection, though...
As for the Saami groups in Lapland with deeper historical roots within our borders, it's AFAIK established that they relied on a more diverse ways of sustaining themselves not really on reindeer much at all but from hunting, trapping, fishing and gathering to some occasional slash-and-burn agriculture. But it also became clear that these populations assimilated long ago already (as has possibly happened to a much wider extent within more than a thousand years already as the Finns slowly migrated north and east from around current South-Western Finland), meaning adopting the Finnish language and agriculture-heavier lifestyle, and then probably intermarrying to an ever-larger extent. The fundamental reason would have been basically the innate difference between the maximum population density allowed by the respective lifestyles: hunting etc. requires much more territory which slowly got occupied and outcompeted by more Finns per km2, and so on...