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Comment by fishcolorbrick | Hacker News Reader

@PeopleOfFinland, one of those Twitter accounts that is run by a different person every week, was ran by a Saami indigenous person native to Lapland last week and they had some criticism of this style of article where Lapland is portrayed as wilderness without reference to the Saami, who've lived there for 10k years.

https://twitter.com/PeopleOfFinland/status/95006224332396954...

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Coincidentally, in looking for Christmas movies for the holidays, I stumbled across "Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale[1]". I won't go into spoilers, but a) it was an unexpectedly smart horror film , and b) seemed to be rooted in actual mythology. Of course, as I knew nothing of the Saami people of Lapland, I started delving into them, their associations with Santa and Christmas, etc., and learned that they've been treated with a great deal of disrespect[2], which actually help to put some parts of the movie in context.

Particularly disturbing to me was this passage in the Wiki:

    The genetic makeup of Sami people has been extensively studied for as 
    long as such research has been in existence. Ethnographic photography 
    of the Sami began with the invention of the camera in the 19th century.[137] 
    This continued on into the 1920s and 1930s, when Sami were photographed 
    naked and anatomically measured by scientists, with the help of the 
    local police—sometimes at gunpoint—to collect data that would justify 
    their own racial theories.

[1] - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1401143/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_people#Discrimination_aga...

You might enjoy the goofy origin story of Santa Claus in Lappland

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/21/opinion/santa-christmas-m...

best Sami movie is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathfinder_(1987_film)

It doesn't really make sense to claim the Saami have lived there for 10k years. Samic language(s) arrived in that area more like 1.5k years ago.[1] Sure, there were people there before that, but they were not "Saami" in any meaningful sense. But yeah, it's before the Finns, anyway.

[1] https://www.academia.edu/4811760/An_Essay_on_Saami_Ethnoling...

While I do understand (and mostly approve) the general criticism, I'm not sure if it really applies to this article specifically. Mostly because the article discusses the operation of Finnish defense forces and the overall military situation in the area, a topic of I feel Sámi are of little relevance. Also I don't see significant unfair characterization of Lapland (as "uninhabited, uncivilized wilderness") in the article.

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