United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

Rensjon, a village lying under the snow in the region of Kiruna, northern Sweden: a television crew from Discovery Channel is filming a short documentary about the Saami (see box p. 20). Outside, the temperature is –33°C, freezing both people and movie cameras. Only Anna, 18 years old, is in her element. Pouring all her teenage energy into defending her “difference,” this young Swedish woman is the star of the hour. “The first thing I’ll pass on to my children? The Saami language.” Anna doesn’t bat an eyelid before answering. On the surface, she is a teenager like any other: her life revolves around snowboarding, her boyfriend and the American pop-rock group Foo Fighters. But deep down, she feels that she has something else, that many of her school friends don’t. “It’s a feeling that grows with time. The more the years go by, the more I feel like speaking Saami and following my uncle and his reindeer into the mountains. Living close to nature gives you incredible strength.” For Anna, being Saami is a bonus, a passport for a life that breaks with the ordinary. “I have my Swedish life, like everyone else, and an extra life as well.” Anna lives with her parents in Gällivare, a mining town located north of the Arctic circle. “I’m lucky, because my parents always told me where I came from and sent me to a Saami school.” Along with Swedish and English, she learnt to read and write in her mother tongue, which her mother and grandmother only know how to speak. She also discovered how to yoik, the art of singing traditional melodies with modulations evoking the wind, which once carried performers into a trance. For several years now, she has sung in public at Saami festivals. PROUD OF HER HERITAGE Often, on weekends, Anna travels 80 kilometres to visit her maternal grandmother Ellen Maria, who lives in Rensjon. With this feisty 77-year old, Anna learns how to make traditional objects in reindeer skin or multicoloured threads. She loves listening to her grandmother’s stories about the past, recounted without nostalgia but with a definite sense of pride: a nomadic childhood governed by the rhythm of reindeer herding, the death of her own mother when she was barely three, her role as the family head that she assumed early on to support her father, brother and little sister, the harsh winter of 1935-36 when all the reindeer starved to death, the trading of “milk against meat” with Finns settled in the region, and finally, the move to a more sedentary lifestyle, access to modernity and basic comforts. “Saami life has changed so much,” says Anna, “I don’t want this memory to die.” Not that the two women would ever turn the clock back. Like her friends, Anna is not attracted to traditional occupations such as reindeer breeding, which employs less than 15 percent the Saami in Sweden: too tough and not lucrative enough, she says. Unless they own more than 400 animals, reindeer herders have a below average living standard and must round off their months by working in the mining industry or in the tourism business. But Anna is sure of one thing. She will continue living in Sápmi (previously known as Lapland) and defend her language and the rights of her small minority. Today, Sweden counts some 15,000 to 20,000 Saami, accounting for less than 0.25 per cent of the country’s population. Even in their own region, where temperatures can drop to –50°C, they only represent between five to ten per cent of inhabitants. The others are mostly miners from the southern part of the country lured by opportunities in important iron ore deposits. Traditionally a people of hunters and fishermen, the Saami became nomadic herdsman towards the end of the Middle Ages. They lived through dark hours from the 16th to the mid-20th century: their lifestyle and customs came under attack and their traditional territory split between several States (see box below). Colonization, taxes, Christian missionaries and the persecution of traditional Shamans, forced labour in the mines, the prohibition to use their language and express their culture, racism and economic decline pushed the majority to assimilate into the dominant and prosperous Swedish society. According to estimates, more than half the Saami in Sweden cannot speak their own language and 90 percent can’t write it. Many young people know nothing about their past or are ashamed of it, says Anna. “Some don’t even know they are Saami or hide it. My boyfriend, for example. When I met him five years ago, no one had ever told him that he had Saami ancestors.” Today, however, a growing number of his friends are starting to accept their origins. Anna will continue speaking up for her culture and “rights.” “As soon as I’m allowed, I will vote in the Sametinget (Sweden’s Saami parliament),” she asserts, regretting that two thirds of the Saami don’t take this opportunity. This parliament, which has an advisory capacity to the government according to its president Lars Anders Baer, was set up in Kiruna in 1993, several years after those in Norway and Finland. It is the result of the birth, after World War Two, of a Saami movement, which gained strength in the 1970s, echoing the affirmation of other indigenous peoples around the world. In recent years, Mr Baer admits, Sweden’s Saami people have scored points on the cultural front, even if he feels the government does not invest enough money in promoting the language. Today, Saami children have the right to be educated in their mother tongue, although few follow this route. The most motivated attend the six bilingual schools in Sápmi’s cities. According to the European research network Mercator, the number of students in these schools rose from 115 in 1994/95 to 170 in 2000/01. Some 180 children spread across other schools in the country benefit from an “integrated Saami education” as part of the general curriculum. Other children take Saami as an option. If they wish, they can continue in high school and university. LAND RIGHTS The environment is slowly changing. National school curricula are starting to speak about the history of minorities in the country. Some media are introducing Saami programmes, albeit in small doses. On the legislative front, Stockholm ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in February 2000. At the same time, a new law was adopted on the right to use Saami before administrative authorities and in court, a decisive step in the recognition of the Saami minority. The looming question of land rights remains. Unlike Norway, Sweden has not ratified the International Labour Organisation’s Convention 169 concerning indigenous and tribal peoples. According to this text, these people must have the “rights of ownership and possession” of their traditional lands and be able to “participate in the benefits” of activities stemming from the exploitation of natural resources. For Anna’s father, Anders, survival depends on this: without economic autonomy that would notably enable his people to develop and modernize reindeer husbandry, Saami culture is condemned to disappear. “If you no longer need 400 words to describe the quality of snow or hundreds of others to designate different parts of the reindeer, you no longer need the language,” he says. “If our traditions die, our language will die.” Meanwhile, his daughter continues to sing. And the future will tell whether her yoik is a swan’s song to Saami culture or an ode to the Sun god of a reborn people. To fnd out more http://www.unesco.org http://whc.unesco.org http://www.tooyoo.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/Redbook/index.html http://www.mercator-central.org http://www.sametinget.se http://www.eblul.org http://www.coe.int http://www.discovery.com Photo at top © Discovery Photo N° 1 © Michael Friedel/Rapho, Paris: A wedding at Kautokeino in Norwegian Sápmi (right). The bridal couple have just said “jua” (yes). For the past 20 years or so, reindeer breeders have traded the traditional sled for a motor-powered varity. Some even use helicopters to keep an eye on their herds. Photo N° 2 © UNESCO/Sophie Boukhari: Anna, 18, her grandmother Ellen Maria, 77, and her mother Irénée, 48 (above): Saami and proud to be. reindeer skins piled in an abattoir near Kiruna in the north of sweden (above left)