Saami still fighting for land rights in Norway

MANDALEN, Norway – Norway’s proposed law on land management has enraged Saami leaders, although the president of the Norwegian Saami parliament, Sven Roald Nystø, is still confident the act will be rejected before it becomes law.

Nystø hopes this will open the way for Saami to finally sit down at the negotiating table with Norwegian officials.

“Our situation is different here in Norway. We’ve never negotiated land claims,” Nystø said. “We’ve spoken about reindeer, but not about land. We want to be put in a position to begin negotiations.”

The Saami Parliament, which represents the estimated 80,000 Saami who live in Norway, was shocked when the Norwegian government presented its proposals on how to deal with land management in Finnmark – the region Saami know as Sapmi.

The Finnmark Act was to be the result of a process that started when Saami protested the construction of a hydroelectric project in Alta, Norway more than 20 years ago. A Saami Rights Committee presented proposals for new land management legislation in 1997 that would recognize their traditional land rights and ownership.

“The Norwegian government seems to have forgotten the fact that the point of the Saami Rights Committee exercise was to base any new proposals [for a land management act] on the result of this process,” Nystø said.

Saami fear the present Finnmark Act, if adopted, would open their region to more industrial development and militarization.

That’s because the act doesn’t recognize any traditional Saami ownership of the land – and expands the land rights of non-Saami in the region to all European Union citizens.

The new law would also safeguard the rights of the Norwegian government to expropriate land for public purposes without compensation, and establish a review committee on which Saami wouldn’t even hold the deciding vote.

This is clearly unacceptable, Nysto said.

“In no way will we have anything to do with robbing future generations of their rights. We, the Saami people, have never given up our inherited rights to land a resources,” Nystø said. “We will fight plans to develop Finnmark as a Norwegian colony and supplier of raw materials at the expense of the rights of indigenous peoples.”

The Finnmark Act was to be submitted to the Stortinget, Norway’s parliament for approval this fall, but Nystø is counting on the proposed legislation being returned to the government for more review in October.