During the prepapration of the act on Metsahallitus the Sámi parliament in Finland said that the Sámi homeland and its forestry has to be removed from Metsahallitus state enterprise functions. Instead it should become one of its public administration tasks. Old forests have to be left out from logging and the loggings have to be performed without harvesters using only lumberjacks. Also reindeer herders need to stay employed and the economical profitability of reindeer husbandry has to be preserved. According to the law logging plans in forests that have been logged before have to be negotiated together with Sámi reindeer co-operatives and with the Sámi parliament.

At the same time as minister for foregin affairs mr. Erkki Tuomioja is talking in Geneva in favour of the indigenous people of the world Finland has forgotten the Sámi as indigenous people. Indigenous people have a constitutional right that guarantees their right to land and livelihood, and because this right is not realised in any form for the Sámi, Finland has not even been able to join the ILO convention for indigenous people.

The UN human rights committee is the latest authority to recon that Finland has failed to solve the dispute of Sámi land ownership. The committee continues that the current situation threatens Sámi reindeer herding and that way also their identity. Therefore the government has to act urgently in cooperation with the Sámi and notify the committee about the measures taken by next autumn.

The government doesn't send any propositions for legislation on the Sámi land and livelihood rights to be processed by the parliament, so the rights are never realised. Although according to the constitution and a EU court decision the Sámi reindeer herding rights have to be guaranteed, the Sámi are treated mainly as local population. Also the network of EU constitutional specialists gave a statement last year to the commission expressing their concern about the Sámi indigenous people's rights not having been resolved and stating that the resolution is needed.

Practically reindeer herding is without any shelter provided by the law against all other land use. The reindeer herding act doesn't consider the Sámi to be indigenopus people. The income level of reindeer Sámi (under 6000 euros) is constantly under the poverty level of EU-Finland. When they become unemployed, the daily allowance is not bound to income like the case is with any other professionals. In 2003 the parliament work and equality committee encouraged the authorities to pay special attention to the position of the Sámi as indigenous people when executing the law on equality. They have to promote systematically the possibilities for the Sámi to support themselves with reindeer husbandry.

Starting from the before mentioned points the "Inari forest dispute" is not going to be solved by an authority such as the municipality manager acting publically in his own municipality supporting logging against reindeer herding - to which activity the tradition in Inari is strong. The actions of Greenpeace are not the cause but the consequence. The Sámi rights for secured reindeer herding and the livelihood provided by it are a nation-wide problem. Solving it demands actions by authorities f ex. under the supervision by Lapland governor Hannele Pokka and taking the obligations for negotiation postulated by the law into consideration. It is possible to practice forestry even in the forest co-operatives of the Sámi homeland, but not from the current basis.

Pekka Aikio
President
Sámi Parliament in Finland

Secretary for Legal Affairs
Heikki J. Hyvärinen
Sámi Parliament in Finland