Fosen Peninsula, Norway – A herd of reindeer running through thick, white snow sounds a bit like thunder.
It's a sight that has been repeated for at least the last 10,000 years on the Fosen Peninsula in eastern Norway, and one that Maja Kristine Jama, who comes from a family of reindeer herders, is deeply familiar with.
Like most Sami reindeer herders, Jama knows every inch of this terrain without needing a map.
Instead of going to kindergarten like most children in Norway, he grew up living outdoors with migratory reindeer. Reindeer herding in Norway is a sustainable activity carried out in accordance with the traditional practices of the Sami culture. Reindeer also play an important role in the Arctic ecosystem and have long been a symbol of the region.
“Reindeer husbandry defines me,” says Jama. “We are so connected to nature that we respect it. We say that you don't live off the land, you live within it. But we see how our lands are destroyed.”
Europe's oldest and last remaining indigenous peoples are severely threatened as a result of borders, land confiscations, construction projects dedicated to the extraction of natural resources and systematic discrimination.
However, this growing sense of suffocation has made the Sami approach another group of indigenous peoples almost 4,000 kilometers away, with whose struggle for survival they identify: the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank.
Their own fight for indigenous rights and self-determination has made the Sami vocal supporters of the Palestinian cause.
“There is an instant need to stand up for people who are being displaced from their homes,” Ella Marie Haetta Isaksen, a Sami activist and artist widely known for her singing, tells Al Jazeera.
Isaksen had just finished participating in several months of demonstrations in Oslo for the rights of his own people when Israel launched its war on Gaza in October.
As the death toll rose, anger against Gaza quickly spread throughout Norway in general and the Sami community in particular. Dozens of Norwegians posted images of themselves holding signs reading “Stop bombing Palestine” on social media, as mass demonstrations called for an immediate ceasefire after Nordic countries, with the exception of Norway, abstained in the vote on United Nations General Assembly ceasefire on October 27.
For the Sami, it was a crucial moment when two causes became intertwined into one. The community launched a series of regular protests in Oslo against the war in Gaza, and those demonstrations continue to take place.
In front of the Norwegian Parliament on a cold October day, surrounded by hundreds of Palestinian and Sami flags, Isaksen held a microphone and performed “joik,” a traditional Sami song performed without instruments. The melodious sounds of him paralyzed the rowdy protesters, carrying a prayer he hoped would somehow reach the besieged children of Gaza.
“I'm physically very far from them, but I just want to grab them, hug them and get them out of this nightmare,” Isaksen says.
“Without attempting to compare situations, indigenous people around the world have stood up for the Palestinian people because our bodies know the pain of being displaced from our homes and expelled from our own lands,” Isaksen says.
A long fight
For more than 9,000 years, the Sami lived a free, nomadic existence that spread across present-day Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. That began to change in the 9th century, when outsiders from southern Scandinavia invaded Sapmi, the name given to the vast, untamed lands of the Sami. Christian invaders established a church in the 13th century in Finnmark, in the northern territory of Sapmi, in what is now northern Norway.
Sweden's break with Denmark, which had also ruled Norway, in 1542 began an era of territorial disputes, conflicts and coercion over the Sami that continues today. A surviving Swedish census from 1591 notes how a Sami community, crossing borders that did not exist for their ancestors, paid taxes simultaneously to Sweden, Denmark and Russia.
The creation of Europe's longest unbroken border in 1751 (between Norway and Sweden) was particularly disastrous for the Sami, permanently restricting them within a country, dividing families, and forcing their reindeer away from migratory routes. .
As has been the case with the Palestinians, the imposition of such borders has had a direct impact on the fragile existence of the Sami, says Aslat Holmberg, president of the Sami Council, a non-governmental organization that promotes the rights of the Sami people in countries Nordic and Western. Russia. It comes from an area on the border between Finland and Norway.
“I don't like dividing the Sami with borders, but now we are people living in four countries,” says Holmberg.
Although the Sami groups maintain a bond, they believe that the borders imposed on them were one of the many colonial acts that separated them. The ban on speaking their own language under forced assimilation policies, which officially ended in the 1960s in Norway, all but erased their cultural ties. Holmberg warns that Sami languages are now “in danger of extinction.”
He's not exaggerating.
There are no historical records showing population figures for the Sami throughout history. Today, however, they are estimated at 80,000. About half of that number live in Norway, where only three Sami languages are still used. Only 20 speakers remain of one of them: the Ume language, used in Sweden and Norway.
In total, there are nine Sami languages left, which are related to languages such as Estonian and Finnish.
The preservation of these languages is fraught with difficulties. In Finland, 80 percent of Sami youth live outside traditional Sami territory, where there is no legal obligation to offer their language services in the government and judicial system. In comparison, Swedish language services in legal and government administration are mandatory in Finland.
Dying languages and border disruptions are not the only problems facing the Sami. Climate change and land grabs for natural resource extraction also threaten livelihoods.
Gold mining and small-scale forestry, both legal and illegal, are common. Nickel and iron ore mining, seen as part of the European Union's self-sufficiency mission, has restricted reindeer roaming and destroyed their feeding grounds.
According to Amnesty International, mining companies are now showing interest in excavating Sami territory in Finland to meet the growing demand for mobile phone batteries.
“We live in a settler colonial society,” Holmberg says. “The Sami know what it is like to be marginalized and lose our lands. The levels of violence are different in Palestine, but much of the underlying mentality is similar. “The United States and Europe have shown that they are not capable of fully recognizing their own colonial history.”
Holmberg issues a stark warning that sounds eerily similar to voices heard in Palestine.
“We are on the brink now. “One more push and we will collapse.”
'Greenwashing colonialism'
Construction of Europe's largest wind farm on the Fosen Peninsula began in 2016. A total of 151 wind turbines and 131 km (81 mi) of new roads and power cables are now spread across the winter pastures of reindeer herders premises and were placed there without consent. of the local Sami.
Five years later, Norway's Supreme Court ruled that the green energy construction had been illegal and violated the human rights of the Sami. But he did not issue any instructions on what should be done next.
Thus, the Fosen wind farm, co-owned by a state-funded Norwegian energy company, a Swiss company and the German city of Munich, remains operational on Sami lands to this day.
A compensation deal was reached in December between Fosen Vind, a subsidiary of Norwegian state-owned company Statkraft, which operates 80 of the wind turbines at Fosen, and southern Fosen Sami. But wind farms owned by foreign companies have yet to compensate the remaining Sami.
There is an irony at play here for the Fosen Sami. “Green” energy projects have been prioritized and built for globalized communities at the expense of the same people who live sustainably, a process described as “greenwashing colonialism” by Sami activists.
“Many talk about the material impact of the landscape destroyed for grazing and now the pastures have disappeared for the reindeer,” says Jama. “But any evidence of Sami history in the area is now hidden and takes a well-trained eye to see.”
He adds that living in “constant fight mode, in stress or fear of our future” has taken its toll on the mental health of many Sami.
Last year, the Sami staged sit-ins inside the Norwegian Parliament and blocked the offices of Statkraft, an event attended by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.
Casting away a shadow of shame
Sami resistance is in full resurgence, particularly among people in their 20s and 30s born or living in urbanized communities and who are now embracing their Sami roots, which their grandparents were ashamed of, they say.
“There is a wave of people who want to reconnect with the culture of our grandparents, who wanted to hide it,” says Ida Helene Benonisen, a Sami poet and activist who clashed with police at the October protests in Oslo.
Official assimilation of the Sami ended in the 1960s in Norway. But the stigma of having Sami roots made families at the time feel “ashamed,” including his own family, he says. Historical “Norwegianization” still haunts Sami families today.
While overcoming past traumas is difficult, Benonisen is proud of her roots and displays her Sami identity on social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok.
Like Isaksen and other activists in their 20s and 30s, she uses social media to educate outsiders about greenwashing and also shares stories from Gaza as part of “a movement of people who oppose colonialism.”
“It was natural for Sami to speak on behalf of Palestine, especially since the genocide began,” says Benonisen, co-founder of a slam poetry venue in Oslo with Asha Abdullahi, a Norwegian Muslim.
“Social media gives people a platform to connect with a decolonized point of view. The story we are told too often is the story of the oppressors.”
