Reindeer
herding is not a job for many Sami, an indigenous people of fewer than
140,000 who inhabit mostly the northern reaches of Sweden, Norway,
Finland and Russia. It is a way of life.
Jovsset Ante Sara, a boyish-looking 26-year-old, knows his section of
the tundra as if it were a city grid, every hill and valley familiar,
the land acquired over generations through the meticulous work of his
ancestors.
He can tell his reindeer from any others by their
unique earmark. And he and his family need them to live and preserve
their claim to the land as well as their traditions.
That is why, Sara says, he has refused to abide by Norwegian laws,
passed more than a decade ago, that limit the size of reindeer herds.
The measure was taken, the government says, to prevent overgrazing.
Sara’s herd was capped at 75. So every year, if the herd grows, he must
pare it down. At least, those are the rules. He has refused to cull his
350 to 400 reindeer, and took the government to court.
“I sued because I could not accept to see my culture die,” he said.
He lost his case before the Supreme Court and has accumulated fines of
$60,000, with the threat of losing his land hanging over him.
The government has given him to the end of this year to comply or he
will begin to accumulate additional fines, and eventually could lose his
reindeer.
The case is just one of the many
battles the Sami of Norway have fought over a long history with the
government to preserve their culture and way of life.
The Sami were colonized by Christian missionaries, forced to abandon
their shamanistic ways and assimilate. Grim tales of Sami children being
sent to boarding schools and studied by anthropologists in dehumanizing
ways remain a stain on the history of the Nordic nations.
Today the Sami of Norway number about 55,000, with 10 percent directly
involved in reindeer herding. The reindeer population in Norway is
estimated at 220,000. Herders earn a living by selling reindeer for meat
as well as for their hides.
“When we kill the reindeer, we use every part of the animal,” Sara said.
The skins are transformed into mittens and slipperlike shoes that curl
up at the tip. The meat is sold on a wide scale across Norway and also
exported. Antlers are pulverized into an aphrodisiac sold on the Chinese
market.
The Norwegian government has tried to
erase the errors of the past, and so today, the Sami have their own
university, schools that teach the Sami language and even their own
Parliament, if largely symbolic.
Kautokeino is
in Finnmark county in Norway, considered the heart of Sapmi, or “the
land of Sami.” At an Easter festival this year, young people beat on
drums while listening to traditional Sami yoiking, a guttural call that
was forbidden during colonization. They wore traditional clothing known
as Gakti and sipped on Red Bull and beer.
Elle Márjá Eira, 34, is a reindeer herder, singer, filmmaker and mother of two. She can recall tales of forced assimilation.
Although many older Sami have maintained a Christian faith, Eira is
part of a younger generation who have actively opposed discrimination
and industrial projects, which the Sami see as a constant threat to
their way of life.
Her father, Per Henrik Eira,
56, together with his fellow herders, recently sued a government energy
project led by Statnett, the government-owned electric company, which
they say is threatening to overtake a large portion of their summer
grazing lands.
He and his neighbors lost the case. Statnett says its project does not threaten Sami culture.
Elle Márjá Eira disagrees.
“When we lose this pasture,” she said, “we will need to find another
place to calve, a place which is not occupied with other herds. By
pushing us into smaller areas, they are forcing us into conflicts with
each other.”
She and other Sami voice similar arguments against the laws limiting the size of herds.
“The problem is that the government doesn’t say exactly who has to kill
their reindeer,” Elle Márjá Eira said. “It just leaves it up to the
family.”
She continued: “Even my 15-year-old
daughter has her own reindeer. We all do. My father has decided that he
will pare down the herd starting only from his reindeer, to avoid
conflicts.”
Many Sami reindeer herders see the
quotas as an effort by the government to limit their livelihood so it
can use the land for industrial projects.
Ninety-five percent of the land in Finnmark county is owned by the
state, although Sami reindeer herders, who hold legal grazing rights,
use much of it.
For decades, the Norwegian
government has designated reindeer herding as an exclusively Sami
activity, providing herding licenses tied to ancestral lands.
The regulations limiting herd sizes were passed in 2007, forcing Sami to eliminate 30 percent of their reindeer at the time.
Sara said the limits have been devastating. If he obeyed the limit, he said, he would make only $4,700 to $6,000 a year.
“Clearly it’s not possible to make a living as the job has become quite
expensive, requiring snowmobiles and all the equipment that goes along
with that,” he said.
The law states that any
herders who are no longer profitable can lose their license. But that is
not all Sara said he would lose.
“I would lose everything my ancestors worked their entire lives to create for us today,” he said. “I will lose the land.”
To call attention to her brother’s case, his sister, Maret Anne, an
artist, piled 200 heads of freshly slaughtered reindeer onto the
snow-covered lawn of the courthouse in Tana in 2014. She topped off the
grisly pyramid with a Norwegian flag. Sara won, twice, in local and
regional courts.
Last fall, when he stood
before the Norwegian Supreme Court, his sister strung a curtain of 400
reindeer skulls in front of the country’s Parliament.
Sara and his lawyer, Trond Pedersen Biti, have taken their case to the Human Rights Council of the United Nations in Geneva.
“It’s my only option,” he said.
Others are more fatalistic, like Per Henrik Eira, who sued to try to
block the Statnett project, and lost. His 18-year-old son, Per John, is
following in his father’s footsteps, training to be a reindeer herder.
“If I lose this case, I won’t have the courage to face my son,” he told
the court, “because I will be forced to tell him that there is no
future for us,"
