Sámi

Background

The Sámi (also spelled Sami or Saami) are a group of indigenous people who live in the Sápmi region of Eurasia, stretching across the Scandinavian and Kola peninsulas. The countries the Sámi inhabit include Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Russia. We do not know how many Sámi people there are since the last census of the Sami was recorded in 1945 (Samer, 2020), but estimates range from 50,000 to 100,000. About 20,000 live in Sweden, 50-65,000 in Norway, 8,000 in Finland, and about 2,000 in Russia (IWGIA, 2020).

History

The Sámi are one of the oldest indigenous groups in Europe (Trumbull, 2019). Nearly 12,000 years ago, the hunters and gatherers who would eventually come to be known as the Sámi entered northern Europe from what is now Russia, long before Scandinavians, Finns, and Russians occupied the area. The Sámi began herding domesticated reindeer in the 17th century, a practice adopted by many people in Siberia (Trumbull, 2019). They used the reindeer as pack animals and for supplies like milk, cheese, meat, and hides, and they would trade these materials with the surrounding groups of people.

Colonialism, Assimilation and Racism

Due to colonialism from the 16th to 18th century, Sámi lost much of their land to Nordic countries (Samer, 2020). After losing pastureland, many Sámi were forced to settle down as farmers, fishers, and industry workers. They were also pushed into the mountain areas (Samer, 2020).

In the past few centuries, regional and national governments, along with Christian missionaries, treated the Sámi extremely poorly, trying to suppress Sámi culture (Partida, 2020). They used Social Darwinism to declare Sámi inferior and created boarding schools to assimilate Sámi children into the larger European culture. A movement in the 1960s helped reform the education system, but the Sámi are still working to establish a curriculum that better reflects their culture and to repair the damage caused by years of assimilation (Partida, 2020).

Economy and Natural Resources

Today, hunting and fishing are not as important as they once were. Only about ten percent of the population herd reindeer for a living (Samer, 2020). European businesses have monopolized the fish that the Sámi once ate, and many Sámi supplement their incomes with tourism, commercial fishing, or other trades. Moreover, Sámi have long relied on sea coasts, lakes, and rivers to fish and hunt, but pollution threatens these natural resources.

Family and Gender Roles

Sámi typically live with their nuclear families, and adults spend a good amount of time with the children. According to (World Culture Encyclopedia, 2020), "The Sami language contains an unusually large number of words that refer to family relationships." The Sámi are semi-nomadic since they migrate with their reindeer depending on the seasons. When traveling, they camp in tents called lavvoos (Pacific Sámi, 2020). When they are not traveling, they stay in siidat (which have different names in Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish law). Siidat are complex “financial and administrative union[s] regulated by law" (Samer, 2020). These communities consist of several families and a council of elders who make decisions for the group. Sámi share resources amongst each other within their siidat. Members in a siida are allowed to fish, hunt, and engage in reindeer husbandry. The males are traditionally tasked with "herding, hunting, and making boats, sleds, and tools," (World Culture Encyclopedia) while the women cook, make clothing, and cure the meat.

Language

There are nine Sámi languages, which are distantly related to Estonian and Finnish. There used to be more, but they have died out due to colonization and forced assimilation (Pacific Sámi, 2020). Estimates suggest that just under half of the Sámi know the Sámi language, and those who do know it typically can also speak one or more other languages.

Sámi, Estonian, and Finnish are part of the broad Uralic language family, specifically the Finno-Ugric language family. This language family is unique for not having any direct relation to the broad Indo-European language family which is spoken by a vast majority of people in Europe, and large parts of South Asia. As a result, the Sámi culture and language has been subject to heavy repression and attempts at integration by surrounding Germanic and Slavic languages.

Use this translation tool to hear what a Sámi language sounds like: http://sayitinsaami.yle.fi/

Music

Joik (or yoik) is the traditional Sámi music, one of the oldest music traditions in Europe (Pacific Sámi, 2020). Christian missionaries tried to ban joik beginning in the 17th century, describing it as sinful, and it was forbidden in schools and many homes until the 1950s. In the 1970s, it was brought back. Today, Sámi joik musicians sing in multiple genres, "including rock, metal, blues, and hiphop" (Pacific Sámi, 2020). Joik songs typically focus on places, animals, and "about each other... When a Saami person meets a friend, he or she may greet them by singing a yoik devoted to that person, or, in other words, yoik them" (Say It In Sámi, 2018).

Clothing

Traditional Sámi attire is called gákti (also mááccuh and määccaǩ). The oldest gákti known to exist is roughly a thousand years old (Pacific Sami, 2020). Gákti are made of many colorful cotton and silk fabrics in colorful prints. They are decorated with ribbons, leather, lace, and embroidery. These outfits tell the story of where Sámi are from since each region and community have their own traditions including gákti designs (Pacific Sámi, 2020). Moreover, the gákti tell family affiliation and marriage status. The clothing is an important symbol of identity, therefore it is seen as disdainful for someone to wear a gákti other than their own.

Legal Rights and Political Practices

The Sámi people have their own parliaments in Norway, Sweden, and Finland. In Russia, the Sámi are represented by NGOs (IWGIA, 2020). The three separate parliaments created a joint council of representatives in 2000. This is called the Sámi Parliamentary Council. In 2007, Norway, Sweden, and Finland signed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The declaration sought to improve the “standards for the survival, dignity, and well-being of the indigenous peoples of the world” (UN, 2007, p. 28). However, a report by a United Nations Special Rapporteur concluded that these countries were not fulfilling their objective of guaranteeing the human rights of the Sámi people (OHCHR, 2015).

The Sámi flag, created in 1986, became official in 1992 (Nordic Co-operation, 2020). According to the Nordic Co-operation, "The red part of the circle symbolizes the sun, the blue part the moon. The colors red, blue, green and yellow reflect the Sámi national costume. Green symbolizes nature, blue water, red fire and yellow the sun." The flag was designed to stand apart from the Nordic cross flags and represent the Sámi nation's separation from the European state system (Pacific Sámi, 2020).

Learn More

For more on Sámi culture, visit http://sayitinsaami.yle.fi/quick-guide-to-sami-culture/

The 2013 Disney movie "Frozen" was inspired by the Sámi culture and their land. However, Disney faced criticism for cultural appropriation. Read more about their attempts to work with the Sámi for a more respectful depiction in "Frozen II": https://nowtoronto.com/movies/news-features/disney-frozen-2-indigenous-culture-sami

If you wish to learn more about Sámis' relationship with their language, watch any of these five short documentaries: http://sayitinsaami.yle.fi/documentaries/

To learn more about the life and culture of Sámis', watch the movie "Sami Blood" (2016) and experience the emotional trauma of anecdotal accounts and Ella Marja's struggle through racism.

Works Cited

“History.” Samer. Retrieved November 6, 2020, www.samer.se/1001.

“Indigenous World 2020: Sápmi.” IWGIA. Retrieved November 6, 2020, www.iwgia.org/en/sapmi.html.

Lehtola, Veli-Pekka. “Sámi Histories, Colonialism, and Finland.” Arctic Anthropology, vol. 52, no. 2, pp. 22-36, 2015

“Pacific Sámi Searvi: Society.” Pacific Sámi Searvi. Retrieved November 6, 2020, www.pacificsami.org.

Partida, Rebecca. "Suffering Through the Education System: The Sami Boarding Schools." Retrieved November 6, 2020, www.laits.utexas.edu/sami/dieda/hist/suffer-edu.htm.

“Sami.” Countries and Their Cultures, World Culture Encyclopedia. Retrieved November 6, 2020, www.everyculture.com/wc/Norway-to-Russia/Sami.html.

“The Sámi Flag.” Nordic Cooperation. Retrieved November 6, 2020, www.norden.org/en/information/sami-flag.

Tambets, Kristiina et al. 2018. “Genes Reveal Traces of Common Recent Demographic History for Most of the Uralic-Speaking Populations.” Genome Biology. Retrieved December 5, 2021 (https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-018-1522-1).

Trumbull, Alexandra. 2019. “The Sami.” Milwaukee Public Museum. Retrieved November 6, 2020, www.mpm.edu/research-collections/anthropology/online-collections-research/sami.

“United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples For Indigenous Peoples.” United Nations. Retrieved November 6, 2020, www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples.html.

United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner. 2015. “Land and Resource Rights Are Key to Sami People's Self-Determination, UN Rights Expert Says.” Retrieved November 6, 2020, www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=16361.