Sámi languages are split into many languages and dialects. Vast majority of the speakers are speaking Northern Sámi. But some have only a couple dozen speakers, and others are already extinct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A1mi_languages#Classifica...
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
Christianization no doubt clashed with shamanism, and diminished its practices. Also made some of the Saami dialects written languages, and brought temperance - both hugely positive for cultural survival.
I think it is very different to other indigenous people, in many important ways.
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.
Nothing about your comment disputes anything I said. I don't know why you posted this in such a contentious tone and implied that I'm squeezing "Sámi into a generic indigenous people mold". I wasn't stereotyping Sámi people, just talking about the challenges they face as a native minority people that live under a repressive government. You can find similar challenges posed to other native people, that's all I was saying.
I tried to keep it as non-confrontational as I could. From what you wrote, people on HN wouldn't know.
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.
Today, it seems to me that Sami have more rights than other citizens. They have all the same rights that other citizens do, but in addition, they have these special rights to be the only ones allowed to hunt on certain government lands etc.
Some complain about that, but personally, I see the "exclusive" rights as primarily being about things that have no point if you are not Sámi anyway.
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.
I personally don't hunt or even live close to these lands where it has become an issue, but I can certainly understand why those living close to there could be upset about it.
I was talking about Sámi history as a whole. Sámi parliament in Finland was recognized in 1995, and its authority is extremely limited. Basically they have no power over the Finnish government. Like I said, they have been thrown a bone and some positive developments have occurred in recent years, but that doesn't make the governments non-repressive as a whole when looking at their history and how they are still affected today by it. Just because you grant them some rights, doesn't erase what has happened before and the resulting societal position of the people.
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.
Last indigenous people of Europe, spanning across four countries. Beyond working hard to keep their languages and cultures alive, they are often fighting against industrial projects directly or indirectly endangering their main activity and source of income, namely reindeer herding. One of these projects, that got nixed recently by regional governments, is the Arctic Railway: https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/arctic/2019/09/arctic-rail...
As far as groups that have kept a continuous identity and language since time immemorial, there are also the Basques, located around the Bay of Biscay. And I believe there are other remote pockets of people that have distinctive genetics in other parts of Europe, but haven't retained a pre-Indo-European language.
The Sámi haven't kept their language since time immemorial, if you base their identity on their supposed genetic uniqueness. Sámi is a finno-ugric language, and that language family is thought to have its origin in the Ural mountains, far, far east of Sápmi.
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.
I think language should not be a requirement either. It's complicated, one can identify with a group despite having lost the language some generation(s) ago.
The issue is that there are only about 30000 Sámi.
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.
How do you define it? It's easier with Europeans and indigenous people in someplace like Australia. In Europe, many migrated in much more distant history, but eventually everyone there has ancestors from someplace else.
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.
I think it's a pointless exercise. European ethnicities are indigenous to various parts of Europe, Scandinavians are indigenous to Scandinavia, Sami indigenous to Northern Scandinavia, and so on. They are all indigenous in the proper context, it's not some exclusionary label.
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!
The Sami count as indigenous because they're not a majority in their ancestral lands. I don't think anyone is trying to dispute that Germmanic peoples are native to northern Germany and southern Scandinavia.
I'm not disputing the fact that Sami are indigenous to the place they live (most humans are), I'm disputing this weird definition of indigenous which seems to align more to the noble savage concept than the actual meaning of indigenous.
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.
Most Sámi are not reindeer herders, and thus are no more nomadic than your average Norwegian. Even going back hundreds of years, many Sámi were primarily fishermen and didn't travel much.
I am not sure what you mean about static fences? Reindeer is semi-wild. They gather them for sure (with helicopters and stuff these days), but outside that the reindeers basically go anywhere they want. Yes, they have ”areas” where they should be, but they are, as mentioned semi-wild animals. I have cottage in Lapland and it is very common to see them on my property almost daily. I like it, but I understand locals do not like it that much, as basically they eat everything you want to grow for yourself (and at north, it is already hard to grow anything).
Some context on dialects that I read, though I want to emphasize that it doesn't invalidate the OP or dialect research in general, it (hopefully) informs our understanding of it:
"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."
The Sami seem to come up on HN on a lot, but one angle I rarely see mentioned is how thoroughly assimilated into the majority cultures they are. I know two people of Sami descent, both of whom are from intermarried families, are physically indistinguishable from non-Sami, speak the majority language as their mother tongue and struggle to connect with Sami language, customs like reindeer herding, etc. And as the pie charts indicate, the vast majority of Sami are in this category.
This is quite different to, say, Aboriginals in Australia, who are most definitely not integrated into the rest of Australian society.
37 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 97.2 ms ] threadThe 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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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?
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.
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."
http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laeme2/laeme_intro_ch1.html
This is quite different to, say, Aboriginals in Australia, who are most definitely not integrated into the rest of Australian society.