Hacker News Reader

Comment by lazyasciiart | Hacker News Reader

> And the few tribal populations in Northern Europe generally were and certainly are today treated at least as fairly as anything in Canada.

Really? The Sami populations don't have any sovereignty that I know of.

View on HN

You have to shoehorn the Sami into this comparison because they really only colonized the Nordic countries contemporary with the majority "European" populations. They weren't, in the same sense, indigenous, just... less western.

No. What you are refering to might be in regards to Uralification, while 50% of Saami undeniably have been indigenous population and were there before Uralics arrived there. And Nordics encroached on lands where even partly Uralized Saami were first. No one is arguing that Saami are indigenous to Oslo, but they were first in 80% of Scandinavia.

I don't think that 80% is true in either the geographic [1] or more practical sense. It's maybe 50% by landmass.

But more significantly, it's not the arable or densely inhabited parts; the vast majority of Scandinavians do not live on land where Sami ever lived. This is just a vastly different than Canada where every square inch was native land at one point. For example, Vancouver has Squamish-owned and developed land right in the middle of downtown, it's a big controversy!

I'm not trying to dispossess or trivialize the Sami or the injustices they did suffer, it's just a very different relationship.

[1] https://canadiangeographic.ca/articles/the-sami-side-of-trom...

At least in Finland Sami lived in the southern parts as well, some still in the 17th century. Most southern Sami probably assimilated with the Finns.

Sami are part of the uralic people although they arrived to Fennoscandia some centuries before the Finnic. There were people in the area before the uralic people came but very little is known about them.

Is sovereignty the criteria for being treated fairly?

Not being treated fairly is a pretty good criteria. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001d059

In Sweden they have a separate parliament.

In Finland as well, although it's not really sovereign like national or municipal parliaments. The constitution does grant Sami and Roma people sovereign rights on their languages and culture.

They got some sovereignty in Sweden with their own parliament etc (but its jurisdiction etc is limited). Can't really say if better or worse than Canada because I don't know enough about the laws in Canada.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com