Norway’s apology to Sami and other minority groups for assimilation policies

Norway parliament apologises to Sami and other minority groups for assimilation policies

The story so far:-

Last week, Norway’s Parliament, the Storting, issued an unreserved apology for its assimilation policies towards Sami, Kven and Forest Finn peoples. It also laid out a series of resolutions to address the continuing discrimination faced by these communities, The New York Times reported.

A century-long process of Norwegianisation of indigenous peoples and migrant groups commenced in the 1850s and did not officially end till the 1960s. It saw the suppression of indigenous languages and traditional culture. Further, Sami children were separated from their parents and sent to boarding schools all across the Sapmi — ‘the land of the Sami’ which corresponds with present-day northern Russia, Finland, Norway and Sweden.

Norway has designated certain groups with ‘long-standing attachment to the country’ as national minorities, including the Kvens/Norwegian Finns, Jews, Forest Finns, Roma and the Romani people. The Sami, meanwhile, are an Indigenous people spread across northern Europe, including Finland, Sweden, Norway and Russia. This region has been called Lapland; however the terms Lapps/Laplanders are considered derogatory by some Sami. Only about 1,00,000 Sami remain. The largest Sami population is concentrated in Norway — considered the heart of Sapmi — in areas such as Finnmark county.

Inhabiting this chilly terrain for centuries, the Sami have developed their own culture and unique way of life. Many are reindeer herders, and the Norwegian government has designated reindeer herding as an activity exclusive to the Sami, issuing herding licenses based on ancestral lands.

Sami languages are any of three languages (sometimes considered dialects of one overarching language) belonging to the Finno-Ugric group of the Uralic language family — North Sami, East Sami and South Sami.

Both Kvens and Forest Finns are much smaller groups (than the Sami) which migrated to present-day Norway around 500 years ago.