The basis of life and significance for equality
In 2006, Ellinor Guttorm Utsi Sami's Equality Award received his work as a duodji athlete and in the reindeer husbandry. Now her basis of life is threatened. She calls for an undue pressure on her reindeer grazing district, čorgas, because of the planned construction of seven wind turbines. Nature is our life and our culture, she says.
This is how it has been and so it is for us indigenous peoples. The nature and landscape we surround ourselves with is the very foundation of Sami culture, language and identity.
So what happens when our foundation wall itself, the natural basis for the culture, disappears under our feet? What happens to us in the wake of climate change, loss of biodiversity and area intervention?
For Ellinor, area intervention can mean that the reindeer will be lost and thus also the basis for her life's work. She uses the whole reindeer. It provides materials, such as leather and horns, to duodji. It provides meat, which can turn into the most beautiful food in her tourist business.
Ellinor and her life work are an example of how industries such as reindeer husbandry and fishing not just provide employment for those who work full -time in the industry. On the contrary, they create ripple effects throughout families, siids and communities. The industries provide the basis for language, for traditional indigenous knowledge, for duodji, for food culture, for interaction in family and family. Often women play key roles.
Ellinor is one of many. She now spends most of her time fighting wind turbines that the state wants to set up just in her reindeer grazing district čorgas. We as a society must, with all our heart and all our feelings, put us in and try to imagine what inhumane pressure she and her district experience in these times with demands for green energy, large area interventions in nature, and the desire to establish 600 wind turbines exactly where she works. She fights a struggle for many, not just in her own district. It can be one side of the challenges.
On the other hand, we must take seriously another and possibly a bigger picture. Here is a bigger picture. The research has previously pointed out that for Sami women, the struggle for the people has been more important than the women's struggle. When we are forced to fight for our cultural survival, there is limited space to take up women's issues. It can be subordinate. In other words, the threats to the natural basis for Sami culture can stand in the way of Sami women's struggle. But not only that – these threats can also contribute to increased risk of violence and abuse affecting Sami women.
This perspective is supported by recent research. In the winter, the National Knowledge Center on violence and traumatic stress (NKVTS) launched the report « When silence is broken: on violence in close relationships and sexual abuse in Sami societies ». The report seeks to obtain elaborate knowledge of violence and abuse in Sami communities.
The causes of violence and abuse are complex. In a Sami context, a combination of factors such as silence culture and dense genealogy in small communities is often pointed out, barriers in the face of the aid system, as well as history of research and injustice. What we have talked less about is how pressure on our habitats and our natural basis can also be a contributing factor.
We know that poor finances, living conditions challenges, broken family relationships, intoxication and mental health problems can increase the risk of violence and abuse. In its latest report, NKVTS writes that several of their informants emphasize that a contributing cause of violence in Sami societies may be the mental stresses, pressured against way of life and the uncertainty of the future that the reindeer herdsmen in particular experience.
We can imagine that this explanatory picture also applies in coastal Sami and river Sami communities, where the fish disappears, state regulations are strict and the future uncertain. A compilation of international research on violence in close relationships and sexual abuse among indigenous peoples confirms that loss of land has resulted in the number of cases of violence and abuse in indigenous communities.
The picture is clear: If our foundation wall disappears, Sami children and women are hard. The problem requires a wide range of measures. In 2023, the Sami Parliament adopted an action plan against violence, and as part of the follow -up of this, we will, among other things, initiate an attitude campaign to convey zero tolerance against violence. It is especially important to work with targeted measures aimed at children and young people.
If we are to provide an equal Sami society free of violence and abuse, then we must also protect the landscape, nature and the biodiversity against predator, against intervention and against over -consumption.
If we are unable to do so, we risk that all other efforts are in vain.
