This court case could set groundbreaking precedent for Indigenous land rights in Europe
CBC
Norway's Supreme Court is deliberating on a case that could grant local control over a vast area in the country's far north — and set a groundbreaking precedent for Indigenous land rights in Europe.
The case will determine whether the largely Indigenous Sámi municipality of Karasjok will get collective ownership over its roughly 5,450 square kilometres of land — the second-largest municipal area in Norway and one of the most productive in terms of natural resources.
The Sámi are Europe's only formally recognized Indigenous group, with traditional territories spanning the national borders of Finland, Norway, Sweden and Russia. Across traditional territories in four Arctic nations, Sámi communities are already engaged in high-profile conflicts over land as the appetite for industrial projects on their territories appears to be ever-rising.
Within the northern coastal area known today as Finnmark, a county roughly the size of Nova Scotia, decisions about land are currently made by a private company, jointly managed by Sámi and a local public government. If the court decides for Karasjok, the community will achieve direct, local control over development decisions in their territory — and call the future of the existing system into doubt.
The case has already proven deeply divisive, with warring op-eds claiming a victory for Karasjok, which has a population of around 2,500 in an area roughly the size of the Greater Toronto Area, would turn neighbour against neighbour and even compromise national security.
But experts say the case parallels those in Canada that launched the modern Indigenous land claim process, and could have further implications for Indigenous land rights in Norway and across Europe.
"It might be all of Finnmark by the end," said Oyvind Ravna, a professor of law at the Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø. "You don't have to go far back in time to see that all of Finnmark, apart from the main towns, is Sámi land."
At issue in Karasjok is whether the Kingdom of Norway ever established legal title over the lands of Finnmark, which formed a part of the heartland of the Sámi people long before the country took control of the area in the early 18th century.
For millennia, the Indigenous Sámi people have hunted, fished and herded reindeer across a broad swath of Arctic territory from modern day Russia to Norway. But whether the Sámi can claim legal ownership of their traditional territory hinges on much more recent history.
The area known today as Finnmark, where Norway's coastline curves toward Russia, has only been claimed by Norway since it was transferred from Sweden in 1751. Even then, it is not clear from records whether the Norwegian state expected actual ownership rights or simply an extension of the king's sovereignty. No treaties were ever signed with the Sámi, Ravna notes, and the first mention of "state land" in a law does not occur until 1848.
Still, for centuries, Norwegians carried out programs of forced assimilation aimed at the Sámi, suppressing languages and customs and denying many of them property rights in their own lands. That history, experts say, has long muddied the waters of identity and ownership in Finnmark.
"The history of land ownership in Norway is very similar to other Indigenous peoples' areas," said Rune Fjellheim, a Sámi politician from Karasjok who helped convene the local parties to the case.
"You meet a people that you first of all don't recognize as as good as you, and you disregard their legal system, established practices and ownership traditions and, in that sense, fundamentally disregard their right to the resources in the area."
In the 1990s, after decades of Sámi advocacy, Norway began negotiating with the newly created Sámi Parliament — a democratically elected Sámi assembly that deals with all matters concerning the Sámi people in Norway — to address calls for land rights and self-government in compliance with international law.