Members of the Ran herders collective after the court decision.
What a great news! Happy about the Samis!
The Swedish Supreme Court has upheld the lower courts, in a landmark decision that recognizes the rights of Sweden’s indigenous population and their reindeer herding.
The following news story was posted on Alaska Dispatch as part of Eye on the Arctic, a collaborative partnership between public and private circumpolar media organizations.
Sami men in Sweden. Photo by Bertil Ericson / SCANPIX
A very active Serge Weber, who is definitely not indifferent to the Sami people’s well-being, provided me with the link to today’s news story Lack of Sami translations in northern Sweden.
Its first abstract tells everything about the issue:
“A Swedish Radio News survey shows that despite the one-year old law making it a requirement for the local governments in northern Sweden to provide information and services to the indigenous, Sami, population, only 2 of 14 bother to do this – sparkling angry reactions from those safeguarding Sami rights and culture.”
Well, I need to say that it’s a pretty common problem in the circumpolar world.
Resource development has only led to more misery for northern Russia's indigenous peoples, Larissa Abryutina from the Russian Association of the Indigenous People of the North, tells a Laval university conference on the challenges of sustainable development and sovereignty in the Arctic on May 18.
Pollution, alcoholism, poor health care reduce life expectancy to between 40 to 45 years.
QUEBEC CITY — Many of the 280,000 indigenous peoples of Russia’s north are watching their communities and cultures teeter on the brink of extinction as economic hardships force them to leave their homelands and migrate in droves to the city.
Many of those who remain behind have abandoned traditional values and become “profit-driven in their search for compensation for their traditional lands,” Larissa Abryutina of the Russian Association of the Indigenous People of the North said May 18 in a presentation to a conference at Laval University on sustainable development and sovereignty in the Arctic.
Like other speakers, Abryutina revealed a striking irony: that it’s much easier to find bad examples of development and self-determination in the Arctic than good ones.
Abryutina, a Chukchi, is herself a casualty of the desperate choices facing northern Russian indigenous people: a doctor of radiology, she left her home region of Chukotka due to its declining standard of living.
Here I would like to share the current results of the Siberian part of the Snow Change International Research Project realization. It took me real efforts to find this information. The project I am about described has its own website, but its owner doesn’t have time to publish a very interesting research results info on its online resource. Therefore, I asked a regional coordinator, the Northern Forum Academy chairman, Vladimir Vasiliev, to present the text to me. He did, but it was totally written in Russian. So I have translated it into English and not sure yet if some terms sound correctly. If any, just let me know about mistakes.
About: SnowChange is a not-for-profit independent cooperative organisation with headquarters in Finland. Head of International Affairs: Tero Mustonen
Status: Active. Website: SnowChange.org.
Project Mission
The international community network of SnowChange spans all eight Arctic states. Most of the member communities and families are from the various Arctic Indigenous Nations and other subsistence communities.
The project involves working with the various Northern areas and peoples on the topics of ecological, especially climatic and weather changes from the scientific and traditional knowledge point of view. In addition to the community documentation Snowchange as well works to advance local Indigenous knowledge in the global context and advance decolonisation of the North in the face of rapid changes.
The scientific priority of Snowchange is currently in the following areas of the North:
- The Saami territories of Finland, Russia, Sweden and Norway
- Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Murmansk and Republic of Karelia in Russian Federation
- Savo, North Karelia and Kainuu, Finland
- Iceland and Faroe Islands
- British Columbia, Northwest Territories and Nunavut, Canada
- Alaska, USA
In addition to the operations in all Arctic countries (United States / Alaska, Canada, Iceland, Greenland and Faroe Islands (Denmark), Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russian Federation) SnowChange has partners in Bolivia, Nepal, Ghana and New Zealand.
Report on the Snow Change project realization in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)
Information from its regional coordinator, Vladimir Vasiliev
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