The Sámi have long desired for a public process and an engagement to examine and expose the Nordic states’ colonial, assimilationist policies toward the Sámi people. (1)

In 2018 Norway established “The commission to investigate the Norwegianisation policy and injustice against the Sámi and Kven/Norwegian Finnish peoples”. In 2021, both Finland and Sweden moved forward on truth and reconciliation commissions of their own to document historical violations and their contemporary consequences on the Sámi. Yet public knowledge about the truth commissions in Norway, Finland and Sweden are lacking.

Critics of the commissions doubt the intention of Nordic governments for reconciliation when current policies continue to violate  rights, for example by promoting both extractive projects and “green colonialism” in the form of harmful sustainability projects which could destroy traditional ways of life already under threat from the climate emergency.  

Just consider the February 2023 protests in Oslo, where young Sámi protesters had to barricade government buildings to get the Norwegian state to listen to their demands for the enforcement of a Supreme Court ruling 500 days after they found the construction of industrial wind farms in Fosen illegal. 

How can past injustices be reconciled within the ongoing structures of colonialism? To address this question, we interviewed and met with Sámi activists, archeologists, historians, journalists, and researchers and examined cartographic evidence, photographs and other archival sources. 

It is while working on the research for this project that we became part of a legal action between Sámi herders of the Jillen-Njaarke reindeer herding district and Øyfjellet wind farm in Norway. We conducted a series of participatory workshops with herders and collected environmental data combined with the herders’ own videos, to create a 3D environment of the disputed site, towards counter-mapping the colonial present in Sápmi.

(1) Rauna Kuokkanen in Human Rights Review (2020)