DoomsdaysCWNorway’s Treatment of Sámi Indigenous People Makes a Mockery of Its Progressive Image
By Martine Aamodt Hess
March 13, 2023
"On March 1, global media outlets reported that #GretaThunberg had been arrested in #Oslo while protesting #WindTurbines. It wasn’t that the #ClimateActivist had suddenly taken a stand against renewable energy. Rather, she had joined forces with #activists standing up for #IndigenousPeople ’s plea to be able to continue practicing their culture in #Fosen, central #Norway. For hundreds of years, this land has been home to #ReindeerHerders — an important tradition, which helps preserve the Sámi’s endangered language. Yet today, the siting in Fosen of wind turbines, which frighten the reindeer, puts its continuation in doubt.
"Some five hundred days ago, #Norway’s supreme court ruled that the turbines are a violation of #IndigenousRights under international conventions. Yet they are still running even now — and indeed, even after the ebbing of the short-lived news attention surrounding Thunberg’s role in the protest. Once again, the Norwegian government has proven that it remains indifferent to Sámi lives.
"'What’s happening in Norway doesn’t surprise me — [there’s] this double standard of working to protect #indigenous groups around the world and presenting itself as this #progressive nation, yet not giving a shit about the indigenous people living within its own borders,' Elle Rávdná Näkkäläjärvi tells me. Between reindeer herding and her studies, the twenty-two-year-old is the leader of the Sámi Parliament’s youth committee and is a board member of the Norwegian Sámi Association youth group. During the recent eight days of protest in Oslo, she stood arm in arm with her Sámi sisters and brothers. “We are used to it but that doesn’t make it any less unjust. It’s about time Norway drops the mask. It’s about time the rest of the world sees Norway for what it really is,' she says.
"From the outside looking in, the Scandinavian country is often seen as a progressive social democracy. But — as Elle’s comments suggest — a story far less told is that of its #colonial past, also striking at indigenous people in Norway itself."
#CulturalGenocide #Assimilation #IndigenousPeople #SamiPeople #SamiResistance #Colonialism #LandBack #IndigenousResistance
Norway’s Treatment of Sámi Indigenous People Makes a Mockery of Its Progressive Image
Norway often presents itself as a defender of human rights around the globe. Yet its treatment of indigenous people within its own borders tells a quite different story, as the Sámi population struggles to defend its way of life.