The Samediggi – the Sami Parliament of Norway - issued a press release last week strongly criticizing the Norwegian government for introducing new legislation regarding land management and resource rights in the northernmost county of Finnmark. The bill is receiving criticism for not taking into account the rights of the Sami as the indigenous inhabitants of the land. President of the Samediggi Plenary Sven-Roald Nystø characterizes the bill as “not worthy of a state based on the rule of law.”
The Finnmark Act proposes the establishment of a Finnmark Land Management Commission, directed by a board composed of three members from the Samediggi, three members from the Finnmark County Council, and a non-voting seventh member appointed by the commission’s chairperson. The commission would essentially have the final word on issues of natural resource access and land ownership on 95% of the uncultivated land in Finnmark. The bill makes no mention of the Sami people’s special relationship with and prior claim to the land, as required by ILO Convention 169 and other international conventions to which Norway is a signatory.
Nystø was unequivocal in stating the Samediggi’s opposition to the measure. “The Government has launched a bill concluding that the Sámi people have no special rights to land and resources in Finnmark,” Nystø was quoted as saying in the press release. “This is directly opposed to the Sámi people’s own understanding of the matter and the Sámi Rights Committee’s view and reports. We therefore reject the Finnmark bill. In no way will we have anything to do with robbing future generations of their rights. We, the Sámi people, have never given up our inherited rights to land and resources.”
The government is describing the bill as an ‘equal opportunity’ measure, touting it as an enlightened piece of legislation which fairly accommodates the rights of everyone in Finnmark without giving special preference to anyone. “We want everyone who lives in Finnmark to have equal rights, regardless of their ethnic background,” Justice Minister Odd Einar Dørum was quoted as saying at the announcement of the Finnmark Act two weeks ago. “We hope we have come up with a regulatory framework that takes into account the interests of all those who live in the county, at the same time as we are considerate of the Sami as an indigenous people,” he went on to say.
The Minister’s hopes seem to be in vain, as the Sami clearly feel their interests have been sidelined in the proposed arrangement. In a statement to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights last week, Mattias Ahren, representative of the Saami Council, which represents Sami in Finland, Norway, Sweden and Russia, challenged the legitimacy of the Finnmark Act: “The proposed legislation blatantly violates international law. To claim that the colonizing Norwegian people have the same right to traditional Saami land as the indigenous Saami people is an outright offence, and further shows a complete disrespect for international law,” said Ahren.
The Samediggi says that, in putting together its proposal, the government completely disregarded the Sami’s own proposal, which reflected over 20 years of work on the issue of land management in Finnmark.
To read the full text of the Finnmark Act (unofficial translation from Norwegian by the Samediggi), and for information on past struggles over resource rights in Finnmark (including the famous struggle over the dam on the Alta River), see the Samediggi website HTML.
