Programmes, planned and created to protect indigenous peoples, have not achieved the wanted results in Finland. Sámi are a minority in the municipality of Inari, which officially favours continuation of logging. Sámi reindeer herders don't have any democratic way to be heard on the issues of land use according to the principle "all on the same line". This structural weakness leads to real need of ways of civil activism. The support and help from Greenpeace to reindeer herders and the publicity this has risen give hope that negotiations on the minimum level - hear, but don't listen - are no longer sufficient. Continuous industrial logging practised on Sámi Homeland gives hardly any benefit to sámi communities: it employs and provides with living few sámi, but at the same time it gnaws the foundation of traditional natural livelihoods. Traditional sámi way of living, which has been completely connected with knowledge of own territory and its tolerance, keeps continuously disappearing alarmingly fast because of outside pressure. Reindeer herders of free grazing reindeer herding aren't alone able to make decisions and to have impact on preservation of their way of life or its disappearance.

Metsähallitus and Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry push the responsibility for solving the situation in Inari on to local level, so that sámi reindeer herding communities should settle the dispute in negotiations with Metsähallitus. This process, practised for a long time, has not achieved any positive results for reindeer herding. The positions for negotiations in itself are impossible: Finnish State commercial enterprise aimed at bringing profit and with certain framework of result to be achieved and with responsibility for implementation and negotiations delegated to it, and the other part, suffering from the actions of this commercial enterprise, sámi reindeer herders are in no way equal partners in the negotiations.

Dispute about grazing land is not local nor can it be settled locally: similar problems occur around the Sámiland in four states between reindeer herders and forestry. Only the landowner can make decisions about land use. In this case it is the State of Finland, which still can't show clear evidence on how it has received the land on sámi territory. The issue here is the position of states surrounding sámi to other cultures: can a way of land use that is economically less profitable and serves needs of a smaller group overtake the needs and demands of majority population. Sámi reindeer herders have often declared their position for the solution of situation: real, sufficient participation in land use planning means that the word of reindeer herders during negotiations counts for as much as word of Metsähallitus. That the grazing land they have claimed as crucial for they livelihood, really is crucial.

Saami Council supports unanimously demands of reindeer herders in Inari and Sámi Parliament of Finland in the Inari forest dispute. Saami Council will also start to examine, whether public mud-slinging, slander and abuse, pressure and intimidation aimed in a previously unseen force of publicity at the reindeer herders and their supporters violate human rights.

On behalf of Saami Council

Alexandr Kobelev Olav-Mathis Eira
Chairperson of Saami Council Vice-chairperson of Saami Council

Saami Council
Seitatie 35
99980 Utsjoki
e-mail: saamicouncil@saamicouncil.net

www.saamicouncil.net