Swedish Sami minister refuses to meet with the indigenous group this year

Ildar, 8 months ago

Indigenous again 😂

livus, 8 months ago

@Ildar I don't understand this comment.

Ildar, 8 months ago

Sweds themselves are indigenous in Sweden 🤷‍♂️

livus, 8 months ago

@Ildar Oh, okay. What you think about definitions of the word "indigenous" doesn't change the underlying story, though, right?

• She's specifically the Minister for Sami Affairs.

• The news article makes no claims about who else is indigenous.

Sweds themselves

I'm curious, do Swedish people not see Sami as Swedes too? In my country all the ethnic groups, including indigenous Maori, are still called "New Zealanders".

Ildar, 8 months ago

In Russian it called “малые народы” it is usually translated as indigenous people, but малый means “small” I think saams has Sweden citizenship but do not call themselves Sweds, they are different ethnical group.

livus, 8 months ago

@Ildar thanks, that's interesting! Maybe there is another word meaning Swedish citizen?

"Indigenous" bothers some people (maybe you?), but I have also seen the term "Fourth World" used for people like Sami, Maori, Aboriginal people etc. I think in India they use something meaning "Tribal people".

Ildar, 8 months ago

I always thought that “Indigenous” synonym for “local” maybe I was always wrong 🙈

livus, 8 months ago

@Ildar I think originally it just meant "produced by an area" but the British explorers started using it about people to describe those they saw living in South America, to distinguish them from colonists and imported slaves.

More recently people who don't like being called "the natives" have used it.

This is pretty accurate:

Peoples are usually described as "Indigenous" when they maintain traditions or other aspects of an early culture that is associated with the first inhabitants of a given region

livus, 8 months ago

From the article:

Unfortunately, the Minister cannot book a meeting with you this year. The Minister receives many requests for meetings that could be valuable and interesting, but unfortunately, we have to decline this time”, the minister answered, according to an SSR press release.

The disappointment was high among the Sami community, as a number of important processes affecting Sami villages, reindeer husbandry, and Sami associations are currently underway, making the meeting with the relevant minister all the more important.

“For the Minister to announce after three months that she will not be able to meet with us this year is not only regrettable, it is an invisibility of our issues. It is a response we are far from satisfied with,” said Matti Blind Berg, Chairman of the SSR.

“We expect the ministers responsible not to duck our questions but to take the time to meet with us,” he added.

According to Jenny Wik Karlsson, Union Lawyer at the SSR, the Sami organisations always emphasised the importance of ministers meeting with Sami representatives in addition to the Sami Parliament, which has always happened in previous years.

“However, the current government does not follow this practice, which is worrying when so many major issues that affect us are on the table”, she said.

“You usually get between 30 and 45 minutes. If you can’t find that during a whole year … that’s not promoting the Sami language,” Karlsson, who has had meetings with several former ministers responsible for Sami affairs in the past, told Radio Ekot.

“The saying ‘if you don’t see it, you don’t have it’ seems quite valid in this context; in our case, it seems that our issues are not sufficiently valuable or interesting,” concluded Blind Berg.

Liljestrand replied to the Swedish media that she had met the SSR at a market in the northern town of Jokkmokk, a meeting that does not count for the SSR because it was brief and unofficial.

The current Swedish government is composed of a centre-right alliance of the Moderates, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals, supported by the far-right Sweden Democrat party.