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Empowering Saami people: greater autonomy for greater equality

Living for the most part in countries praised for their democratic system, the Saami population still feels threatened. Is this evidence that colonialism is hardly a thing of the past?

By Marie Francisco
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Four Swedish Saami women from Wirijaure Staloluokta outside the shop in Furulund, July 2015. Wikicommons/ Baard Hartvig Lund. Some rights reserved.

The first page of the Saami Council declaration held in Tråante in 2017 clearly proclaims:

“To enable the Saami people to live in a responsible way and be able to celebrate the next one hundred years, mercenary states in Sápmi must cease to impede our right to self-determination”.

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0