Truth commission demands apology and action over abuses against Sámi

Sweden’s Truth Commission for the Sámi people has called on the state to address historical and ongoing abuses, including by apologising and improving education about Sámi history, SVT reported. “It is incomprehensible that Sámi people have faced this kind of vulnerability here in Sweden,” said commission chair Lena Nyberg.

The government inquiry spent five years collecting about 300 testimonies from Sámi people and reviewing decisions made by the state and the Church. Its report describes abuses including race biology examinations, forced relocations, and losses of language and land.

Some people had to gather the strength to recount what they or their ancestors had experienced, Nyberg said. The most powerful accounts, she added, concerned authorities taking Sámi children from their families and placing them in residential schools, workhouses or nomad schools.

The commission says Sweden does not comply with either its own laws or international declarations on Indigenous rights. It wants school pupils to learn more about the Sámi people’s place in Swedish history and says the state should apologise for past abuses.

Nyberg said Sámi people continue to face threats and hate, including Sámi children at school. She called for better cooperation between the majority population and the Sámi people. The commission also says the Swedish Police Authority lacks sufficient knowledge of Sámi people’s situation and rights.

The report criticises Swedish society for failing to manage conflicts between reindeer husbandry and other interests, including forestry, wind power and mining. It singles out the Swedish Forest Agency, saying it has not adequately considered Sámi needs for reindeer grazing. The report says the agency has approved clear-cutting in areas where reindeer lichen, an important food source for reindeer, struggles to recover.

The commission argues that land used for reindeer grazing should be treated as a use right comparable to ownership. “It cannot only be the Sámi side that has to give way,” Nyberg said, adding that much grazing land has already disappeared.

The commission is also calling on Sweden to ratify ILO Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, which it says would increase Sámi influence in several areas. Successive Swedish governments have declined to sign, partly because of concerns about the implications for forestry and mining.

The Sámi are recognised in Sweden as both a people and an Indigenous people, and are one of the country’s five national minorities. Indigenous rights include protections for culture and language, and rights concerning self-determination and land and natural resources.