Sami politics and industrial development in Northern Norway

Abstract

Over the last thirty years, the growth of Sami politics and Sami institutions – and these institutions’ participation in an international indigenous discourse in which the UN system is very important – have strengthened Sami rights and the more general role of Sami politics in the north of Norway. In this article we discuss to what extent and through which mechanisms the Sami are able to have an impact on new industrial development and modernization processes in Finnmark, Norway’s northernmost county. How and in what way are Sami institutions – and particularly the Sami parliament – linked to local and regional agents and institutions of change, and to the increasingly important large companies moving in as part of the economic globalization of the north? To what extent does Sami politics make a difference? A central conclusion is that Sami politics has gradually become an integrated and important part of the transformation going on, influencing broadly and even deeply the new industrial development in the area. Even so, economic globalization in particular has put Sami culture under heavy pressure, making it difficult for Sami politics to find solutions that strengthen the traditional Sami way of life.