Land, Racism and Discrimination: Sámi rights and contemporary colonialism in Sweden and Finland (RADISAM)

Indigenous Peoples have for centuries resisted settler states and colonial administrations.

The last decades bear witness of their success in the development of international human rights instruments and business standards.

Yet, many states have been reluctant to implement Indigenous land rights, leaving Indigenous Peoples in a paradox between legal recognition and administrative inaction.

Indigenous land rights have also provoked opposition within settler communities, who consider them a threat to their own rights.

Consequently, there has been a sharp growth of anti-Indigenous counter-movements across the world, resulting in hate speech and hate crimes against Indigenous peoples.

RADISAM combines theories of settler colonialism and structural approaches to racism to analyse the complex social forces that are driving anti-Indigenous racism and discrimination in the Nordics.

Exploring how such racism intersects with struggles over Sámi land rights and impacts Sámi political agency is a novel approach.

Two empirically rich cases, the Girjas legal case in Sweden, and the Sámi Parliament Act in Finland, will be studied in-depth and compared through theory-driven content analysis of formal policy documents, traditional and social media, and interviews.

Our purpose is to contribute to cutting-edge theorisation of Nordic settler colonialism and its links to contemporary discrimination of the Sámi to explain and prevent growth of anti-Sámi racism.