Sámi Languages and Dialects (2015)
nordregio.org
nordregio.org
The story of the Sámi people is very similar to many other native people. No independence allowed, decades and/or centuries of cultural assimilation and powerlessness. Only now the governments are starting to throw a bone to the Sámi people by funding language nests, but there is a long way to go until the Sámi people are in control of their own future.
Interestingly, some Sámi people have taken on rapping to keep their languages alive. One of them being Amoc, who raps in Inari Sámi, which has around 400 speakers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdjwXx531Y4
Also hitting them with bible: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianization_of_the_S%C3%A...
Sámi and Germanic speaking peoples have lived side by side for almost 2000 years. That's very different from the classical colonial story.
For much of history, Sámi were exploited but prized subjects, because they were taxed in furs, a very profitable trade commodity. At one point, three states (Norway, Sweden and Russia) taxed the Sámi... although that can't have been fun for the Sámi, it also gave them considerable legal protection, since you didn't mess with someone that profitable.
Assimilation is also a complex story. It was worst in Norway in the 20th century - after WW2, which makes it especially damning. There they committed basically all the classic colonial crimes that e.g. Canada and Australia committed against their indigenous populations - separation of families, suppression of language, forced sterilization, you name it.
But at other times, especially in Sweden, they went to the other extreme of segregation instead, under the "Lapp ska vara lapp" policy, where Sami were not allowed to get education, and those who failed to live up to the exotisized image (e.g. by not being reindeer herders) were denied traditional rights.
On religion, it's also rather far from the classic "they came and imposed their religion on us" story. Christianity didn't reach the Sámi much later than it reached the Norse, if it was later at all. The first chapel in Finnmark was apparently built by Sami. The presence of the Virgin Mary in some Sámi folk tales is good evidence that it wasn't after the reformation the Sámi became Christian. However, since the Sámi were at that time nomadic, had low literacy rates and lived geographically and culturally far from ecclesiastical overview, they did not stay orthodox and mixed in a lot of animistic beliefs and superstitions with their Christianity. Sápmi today is a stronghold of arch-conservative Christianity, in particular followers of the 19th century Sámi pietist reformer Lars Levi Læstadius, and that's another thing that doesn't fit well with the Sámi as a "typical indigenous people", as well as a source of conflict between generations, where younger Sámi people may be a lot more OK with the idea of themselves as basically pagan (and their pietist parent generation as self-hating colonialism victims).
So, let's be careful to not squeeze the Sámi into a generic indigenous people mold. I get that doing so is often a well-meaning effort to justify Sámi rights, but it should not be necessary to cut the foot to make that shoe fit. I think it's important to focus on the value of language and culture over ancestry.
Apart from the ones living in Russia, I don't really agree that Sámi live under a repressive government. Norway, Finland and Sweden all have Sámi parliaments to take care of their special interests, as well as (of course) legal protection for their cultural and linguistic rights in the "regular" government.
Finland also has a minority of Swedish-speaking Finns. Just compare how the Finnish-Swedish population and the Sámi population were treated throughout history, and you'll see the difference. Swedish is an official language in Finland, none of the Sámi languages are. And you couldn't get an education with Sámi as your primary language until 1994.
These are very recent developments when compared to repression lasting centuries. Just like racism towards African-Americans didn't stop with the Civil Rights Movement, repression of the Sámi people didn't end with the Sámi parliament.
I remember some years ago, there was a huge debate in the forums of Vårt Land, Norway's largest Christian newspaper, between one advocate for these exclusive rights, and one furious opponent. The funny thing was that the proponent was a super-samophile southerner who had learned the language and moved north, while the opponent was a (genetically, at least) full Sámi who just happened to be an old school Marxist who hated rights based on nationality.
This is quite different to, say, Aboriginals in Australia, who are most definitely not integrated into the rest of Australian society.
Now, there are some who argue that the Sámi are in part genetic descendants of Norway's first post ice age Neolithic settlers. There are some arguments from the supposed genetic peculiarity of the Sámi towards this end. But if so, they didn't keep their language and culture, that has origins in the east.
I think those genetic arguments are fishy anyway, it's just a little too convenient for (Sámi) nationalistic narratives.
To be clear, I don't think the possibility that (proto-)samic speakers arrived in Scaninavia at more or less the same time as indo-european speakers, is in ANY way an argument against recognition and protection of Sámi language and culture. That should not in any way rest on some Neolithic blood quantum thing.
In Norway, recognition is based on language, you can register in the Sámi rolls if you speak Sámi at home or your parents or grandparents (possibly great-grandparents too now) used to. That's the right way in my opinion, not genetics.
Agree 100% on the other points.
That means that if even 0.5% of non-Sámi Norwegians decided to suddenly identify with them, we'd swamp them. With whatever caricatured, romanticized, self-serving idea of Sámishness we came up with.
So I think the three (or is it two?) generations rule is sensible. Yes, you don't have to speak Sámi to be Sámi, but if not even one of your great-grandparents could speak Sámi, then your connection to the culture is tenuous enough that you should make some effort yourself (I.e. learn the language yourself) before you start getting into internal Sámi politics.
Only if you essentially consider the definition of "indigenous" to be "noble savage".
Most Europeans are indigenous to Europe.
Perhaps it means someone who was there before another group arrives, meaning that the definition is relative, it means 'earlier'. There's also an implication that the latter group has transformed the place somehow.
A similar word in aboriginal. Some meanings include "present from the beginning ... inhabiting or existing in a land from earliest times"; "Inhabiting or occupying a country before the arrival of European colonists"; "the earliest known inhabitants of a land"; etc.
> adjective
> originating or occurring naturally in a particular place; native: the indigenous peoples of Siberia | coriander is indigenous to southern Europe.
Secondly, if you want to segment the world into mutually exclusive "indigenous" areas (I find this kind of offensive to be honest), you should make sure you're actually right. Germanic peoples were present in all of Scandinavia before the Sami migrated there, not just the south. But like I said, I have no problem saying the Sami are indigenous to Northern Scandinavia because being indigenous to an area is not an exclusionary label.
Long story short: If an ethnic group is a majority, it's not going to be recognized as indigenous. EWe can argue about the definition as much as we like, and you're absolutely right re. the Germanic peoples having lived in the Nordics for longer than the Finnic ones have, but for all practical intents and purposes, governments, and international organizations will consider the Sami indigenous.
I think that's taking the conversation to an extreme, and then finding offense in the extreme you created.
> I find this kind of offensive to be honest
How does it offend you?
You raised the issue! But that's always an answer, to dismiss everything. Clearly there are differences between those examples. Oh well. Have a good one!
There are still many Swedes, Finns, Germans, French etc around.
"There are no such things as dialects. Or rather, 'a dialect' does not exist as a discrete entity. Attempts to delimit a dialect by topographical, political or administrative boundaries ignore the obvious fact that within any such boundaries there will be variation for some features, while other variants will cross the borders (Laing and Lass 2006: 417). / ... / A dialect atlas is, at least in part, a set of maps showing the distribution of linguistic features in space. Whether modern or historical, it is not made up, however, of static displays of dots or boundary markers on regional maps. Rather, it shows a continuum of overlapping distributions, where 'dialects' are assemblages of regional features that vary from map to map both spatially and temporally. This is because language change, like biological change, occurs differentially in different spatial settings. Change over time involves the vagaries of language use and thus introduces a necessary social dimension. Dialectology therefore operates on three planes: space, time and speech community."