June 10, 2022 1:00 pm
“Let’s be clear: they have stolen our lands”. Henrik Blind, 43, a Sámi politician from the Swedish Green Party, dedicates an hour of his busy Monday morning to us to talk about neo-colonialism in Sápmi (in Italian Lapland), a region straddling Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia where the only indigenous people of Europe live, the Sámi.
Since time immemorial, the Sámi have lived in and exploited the vast areas of northern Fennoscandia for fishing, hunting and reindeer herding, resources that are an essential part of their identity. After the Swedish state was born in the Middle Ages, they began to pay taxes for the land they owned.
This changed in 1673, when the Swedish crown issued a decree to encourage farmers to settle in the north of the country, perceived as a wild and uninhabited region. Since that time, the Sámi have gradually lost their land rights.
“For politicians and the tourism industry, Sápmi is still a wild place. Thus, everyone has gotten used to talking about it in these terms, rather than considering it as the territory of a people and its culture, ”explains May-Britt Öhman, a sámi researcher at the Uppsala University Center for Multidisciplinary Studies on Racism.
The colonization of the north continues, say the Sámi and their supporters, only today it has taken on a different shade, a green shade
“These beliefs are the result of early twentieth century biological racism, according to which the Sámi people were too primitive to care for their land. Hence the idea that a territory should be used by those who know how to manage it best “.
They are still rooted ideas. The colonization of the north continues, say the Sámi and their supporters, only today it has taken on a different shade, a green shade. “Domestic and foreign companies are doing as the Swedish authorities in the past: they are appropriating the land under the pretext of the ‘green transition’ or energy. But the logic remains the same! The north is wild, nobody lives there, so you can easily develop new projects “, explains Blind, who in recent years has fought against the opening of an open cast iron mine in the Kallak region, 40 kilometers from Jokkmokk, where he lives and works. But on March 22, the Swedish government gave the green light to the British company Beowulf mining, despite protests.
Hunt for critical raw materials
The lost land rights of the Sámi remain a hotly debated topic in Sweden. The truth commission, which in November 2021 launched an investigation into the abuses committed by the Swedish state against the indigenous population, will also address this issue.
Northern Sweden is rich in so-called critical raw materials, essential for the energy transition. Rare earths, lithium, cobalt, nickel and graphite are needed to produce batteries (especially for electric vehicles) and wind turbines. The “undeveloped land” and funding from the European Green Deal are attracting “green industrial mega-projects” such as the lithium-ion battery gigafactory in Skellefteå, Richard Orange wrote in the Guardian last November. The British journalist living in Sweden compares the current critical mineral rush to the Dubai gold rush or the Klondike rush in the nineteenth century.
Despite strong protests against new mining projects, for example in Nunasvaara, where the world‘s finest graphite was found, Sweden remains true to its agenda: to try to fully switch to renewable energy by 2045 to become the first country in the world to completely give up fossil fuels (Finland aims to become the first fossil-free country by 2035)
80 percent of the wind farms will be built in the north of the country by 2023. Businesses and institutions consider these lands to be uninhabited
In 2015, the government launched Fossil-free Sweden, an initiative that “deals with identifying obstacles and opportunities to accelerate development” and prepares policy proposals for the government. “Sustainable mining”, based on the electrification of mines and the use of biofuels, is part of the strategy. As well as the expansion of wind farms. Wind energy currently satisfies 18 per cent of Sweden’s electricity demand: the remainder is produced by nuclear power (40 per cent) and hydroelectric power plants (45 per cent). The increase in wind power generation will allow it to “export green energy to the rest of Europe and thereby reduce emissions on the continent,” says the Swedish Wind Energy Association.
Most of the planned wind farms (80 percent) will be built in the north of the country by 2023. Why? “Location is perfect. A lot of wind blows and nobody lives there ”, explains Tomas Riklund, the Svevind company spokesman, reinforcing the myth of the uninhabited north. Svevind is currently building Markbygden 1101, the largest wind farm in Europe.
The silence clause
Twelve years ago, when the Swedish government issued the concession for this gigantic wind farm spanning 450 square kilometers, the municipality’s Jonas Lundmark used the same argument in a radio interview: “Over the past 50 years, the population has gradually declined. . Moreover, there are no conflicting interests “. However, Lundmark did not mention the sámi, whose winter grazing area is located in that area.
According to Riklund, there is currently little opposition to the wind farm, as the company has paid compensation. Reindeer herders, however, unofficially say that they cannot talk about any problems due to a clause requiring silence in the agreements they have signed.
Some scientific research claims that wind farms alter the migratory paths of reindeer and affect their well-being: the noise of the turbines scares the animals. The Sámi people have repeatedly tried to stop the construction of Markbygden between 2010 and 2013, without success. “The project was classified as a non-Sámi issue, so the consultation requirements were invalid,” wrote researcher Ellen Ahlness. Ingrid Inger, former president of the Sámi parliament, warned that building a wind farm in these areas could cut winter pastures by a quarter.
According to several studies, land reduction is currently the biggest challenge for reindeer farming in the Arctic. The acreage of grazing areas decreased significantly in the twentieth century, due to logging and the massive, industrial-scale installation of hydroelectric power plants, and continues to shrink due to green investments.
Initial enthusiasm for wind power is waning in Sweden. A recent study by the University of Gothenburg found that support for investment in wind energy at the national level fell from 80 percent ten years ago to 65 percent. In areas where power plants are planned, the percentage is even lower: in 2020 only 45 per cent of respondents were in favor of the Ripfjället power plant project, 400 kilometers west of Stockholm.
The Sámi have many supporters in the fight against what some have called “green colonialism”: from concerned Swedes who oppose the destruction of nature, to the Swedish church (former colonizer of the north), to environmental activists. Stand with Sápmi, support Sápmi, and Stop green colonialism, Stop green colonialism, now appear every Friday in the climate strikes of Fridays for future, the movement launched in 2018 by Swedish Greta Thunberg. The young activist asked the Swedish government to stop the colonization of the Sápmi during the protest against the new iron mine in February.
The concept of “green colonialism” had already emerged in recent years. Former Sámi parliament speaker in Norway, Aili Keskitalo, spoke about it in 2016. He feared that “powerful groups located far from the Arctic are trampling on the rights of the Sámi, using the threat of climate change as an excuse to steal their lands,” transforming them without their consent “. These concerns are rooted in history and carry deep scars with them. Norway and Sweden imposed brutal regimes on the Sámi in hopes of westernizing and modernizing them, compromising their culture, language and way of life, including the imposition of energy projects.
(Translation by Silvia Arseni)