Who Is Sami? A Case Study on the Implementation of Indigenous Rights in Sweden

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the complications that arise in implementing Indigenous rights in Sweden, in particular in deciding who belongs to Indigenous groups and as such to whom Indigenous rights are accorded. I discuss the political mobilisation of the Indigenous population of Sweden, the Sami, and introduce a case study based on interviews conducted with parliamentarians in the Sami parliament, a governmental institution, as well as Sami rights activists and scholars. My interest in “Who is Indigenous”, or rather “Who is a Sami”, is based on the impact this has on the workings of an Indigenous rights movement and its leaders, and the possibilities of achieving the rights they claim.

Guðrún Rós Árnadóttir is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Political Science at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada (2015-present). She holds an M.A. in Nationalism and Minority Rights from the Nationalism Studies Program at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary (2012–2014), and a B.A. in Political Science from the Political Science department at the University of Iceland (2008–2011).