#saami

[smsomah]

Lapland, Sweden. Anna Riwkin (1908-1970)

[thenuclearmallard]

The Sámi are being arrested for protesting.

[sweetpea67]

The way Europeans will pretend that they don’t have antiblack racism or a history of colonialism and oppression against anyone who isn’t in the “ethnic in-group” is so annoying. Yes I am American I know America sucks. But what also sucks is you guys gesturing to America as an obvious scapegoat so you can avoid confronting your own problems, and I see that all the damn time.

“We have racism in Europe, but it’s different than in America.” In many ways, yes; for example anti Romani sentiment is a more potent force in Europe than in the US (although it exists here as well) and many of the immigrant groups discriminated against are Eastern European or MENA. On the other hand though, I don’t see any evidence that Black and Afro-diaspora people are treated any better. Same for Asians. And if you get on your high horse about how the US was founded on the stolen land—not saying it isn’t—then you should probably confront your treatment of Indigenous European groups like the Saami.

You are not better than us just because you haven’t been in the news, and you need to stop pretending like you are.

[yokyopeli]

Saamelaisten kansallispäivä on

pohjoissaameksi Sámi álbmotbeaivi, 

inarinsaameksi Säämi aalmugpeivi ja 

koltansaameksi Säʹmmlai meersažpeiʹvv

Hyvää saamelaisten kansallispäivää!

Happy National Saami Day!

[myutsuwu]

A very good read

Why are we still calling it ”Lapland”? – An essay about calling things by their real names

If you only know the colonial name for our lands, you’ll have very hard time finding accurate information about Saami People, the history of

[useless-catalanfacts]

Sweden saying they'll vote against allowing the use of Catalan, Basque and Galician in the European Union Parliament because "there's lots of minority languages and we can't allow them all" is so funny because CATALAN HAS MORE SPEAKERS THAN SWEDISH

Catalan is the 13th most spoken language in the EU. It has more than 10 million speakers, which means it has more speakers than other languages that are already official EU languages like Maltese (530,000), Estonian (1.2 million), Latvian (1.5 million), Irish (1.6 million), Slovene (2.5 million), Lithuanian (3 million), Slovak (5 million), Finnish (5.8 million), Danish (6 million), Swedish (10 million), and Bulgarian (10 million).

Neither Galician (3 million) nor Basque (750,000) would still be the least spoken languages to be allowed in the EU representative bodies.

But even if any of them did, so what? Why do speakers of smaller languages deserve less rights than those of bigger languages? How are we supposed to feel represented by the EU Parliament when our representatives aren't even allowed to speak our language, but the dominant groups can speak theirs?

It all comes down to the hatred of language/cultural diversity and the belief that it's an inconvenience, that only the languages of independent countries have any kind of value while the rest should be killed off. After all, isn't that what Sweden has been trying to do to the indigenous Sami people for centuries?

[allyouneediswall]

[allethnicities]

The Sámi are the Indigenous peoples of the vast circumpolar region of northern Fennoscandia and the Kola Peninsula, whose distinct cultures, languages and lifeways have developed in close relation to Arctic and sub-Arctic landscapes; they live across parts of what are today northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and northwest Russia, and are not a single homogeneous group but a constellation of Sámi nations and language communities speaking several Sámi languages (members of the Uralic family) — Northern Sámi being the most widely spoken — along with Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish or Russian to varying degrees. Historically their economies combined reindeer herding (a central livelihood and cultural anchor for many, but not all, Sámi), fishing, hunting, small-scale farming and trade, and those traditional subsistence practices remain culturally important even as many Sámi have urbanized and work in a wide range of modern professions; place, seasonal movement, and intimate ecological knowledge shape social organization, kinship and seasonal rituals. Sámi material culture is distinctive — the brightly patterned gákti (traditional clothing), intricate handicrafts known as duodji made from wood, bone, leather and textile, and silverwork — while the vocal tradition of joik (a form of song that can evoke people, places or emotions) embodies a non-Western aesthetic and spiritual relationship to landscape and memory. Over centuries Sámi societies experienced Christianization, state assimilation policies and pressure on land-use, which led to loss of language and rights in many communities; in recent decades there has been a lively cultural and political revival marked by language revitalization, contemporary art and literature, legal and political mobilization (including the establishment of Sámi representative bodies in several countries), and activism on land rights, resource development and environmental protection. Today Sámi identity is lived in many ways: some communities prioritize reindeer pastoralism and seasonal mobility, others center urban Sámi cultural institutions, and many individuals combine ancestral practices with modern education and careers; across these differences, Sámi people continue to assert their status as Indigenous peoples with distinct worldviews, legal claims to territory and cultural heritage, and a dynamic presence that is both rooted in northern landscapes and engaged with global Indigenous movements.