The World Briefly

March 01, 2023

The Lapland Conundrum

Finland

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Contentious legislation that would reform Finland’s law governing rights for its Indigenous Sámi people failed to get past the final committee stage in parliament, shattering the hopes of Sámi activists who had seen the bill as a major step toward self-determination, Euronews reported.

The Sámi Parliament Act was to set out how the Finnish government interacted with the Indigenous people’s legislative assembly on matters that affect their communities. Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin had described the bill as an important human rights milestone for the European Union’s only Indigenous group.

But the country’s Constitutional Law Committee failed to move the bill forward for a vote, amid internal opposition within Marin’s ruling coalition, including the rural-backed Centre Party which objected to the draft legislation.

The bill’s failure caused disappointment among its supporters and Sámi activists, the latter describing its failure as “utterly shameful.” Marin called the decision “unfortunate and regrettable.”

Even so, the proposed law has sparked anger and controversy since it was introduced in November 2022, according to Canada’s CBC.

Analysts noted that one of the key issues of the bill was the matter of Sámi identity.

The new reforms would have redefined who is eligible to vote in Sámi elections even as critics countered that hundreds of would-be voters would be halted from participating in the country’s Indigenous politics.

According to the original Sámi Parliament Act enacted in 1996, a person is deemed eligible to vote in Sámi elections if they meet one of two criteria: Either a great-grandparent or a more recent relative spoke Sámi, or an ancestor was listed on tax documents dating back to the 16th century as a “Laplander” – a phrase meaning hunters, fishermen, foresters, or herders.

Sámi leaders have long claimed that the Laplander criteria are too broad and expose the community to fraudulent claims based on distant heritage.

As a result, the Sámi Parliament has consistently dismissed applicants who claim Sámi rights on these grounds. However, the Finnish Supreme Court overruled those decisions in a series of judgments since 2011, adding hundreds of new voters to the rolls.

There are around 10,700 Sámi in Finland, with one-third of them still living on ancestral Sámi lands, known as Sápmi, in Finnish Lapland.

This story originally appeared in the March 01, 2023 newsletter, Nintendo and Synagogues.