Madras Times - Truth commission on Sweden's Sami people seeks redress

The Truth Commission for the Sami People said it would present 71 proposals to the government, authorities, museums and Church of Sweden "to acknowledge and take responsibility, compensate for the human rights of the Sami people and find a way forward based on equality and respect for the human rights of the Sami people".

"Discrimination against Sami, racism, hatred and threats must cease," the commission said in a statement published just hours before it was to present its final report to the government.

There are an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 Sami people across the vast Arctic wilderness of northern Finland, Norway, Sweden and Russia's Kola peninsula.

They have lived by hunting, fishing and reindeer herding for thousands of years, and been subjected to colonisation for centuries.

Sweden's truth commission, set up in 2021, was tasked with charting and investigating the policies affecting the Sami and their implementation.

"The state's control and guardianship categorised the Sami and limited their self-determination, leading to division and loss of rights," it said in the statement.

The state and church controlled where and how they lived, the type of schooling for children, the language they spoke, and how they could practice their culture, religion and traditional livelihoods, it said.

Reindeer herding has been a bone of contention for years, with the Sami insisting their land rights in vast swathes of the north are at threat from industry, including mining, forestry, wind and hydro power required for the green transition.

In 2021, the Lutheran Church of Sweden apologised for centuries of "severe violations of human dignity" against the Sami people.

- Testimony -

The commission was scheduled to present its final report to the government at a ceremony starting at 1:00 pm (1100 GMT) in the city of Ostersund, known as Staare in the Southern Sami language.

A central part of its work has been to gather testimony from Sami people about their experiences, collating some 300 interviews and written accounts.

The commission presented a research anthology in March, where researchers described abuses such as forced relocations and how Sami children were forcibly taken from their families and put in boarding schools. They also documented how Sami culture and faith were broken down.

The persecution of the Sami, Europe's only indigenous people, goes back to the 17th century, when the state began colonising and exploiting their resource-rich lands.

They were first brutally forced to adopt Christianity and abandon their shamanism, before assimilation efforts intensified in the 19th and 20th centuries as the far north's economic importance grew.

In June 2023, a commission set up by Norway's parliament delivered a damning report on historical injustices against and attempts to assimilate indigenous Sami, Kvens and other ethnic Finnish people, and in November 2024, Norway's parliament formally apologised to the minorities.

In December 2025, a Finnish a truth and reconciliation commission called on Finland to rectify injustices committed against the indigenous Sami people.

Unlike similar commissions in other countries, the Swedish commission was not tasked with proposing potential reconciliation efforts.

But when the Sami Parliament requested that the government set up a truth commission, it said it expected that a reconciliation process would follow once the commission's work had been completed.

Z.Bhatia--MT