The New Lapp Movement: “No mysterious, forgotten peoples to be found”

Image: Samuli Paulaharju (1922)

In this blog post I will delve (partly) into the very recent history of the New Lapp Movement. This post is heavily influenced by emeritus Professor of history Veli-Pekka Lehtola’s work, where his text is directly translated from Finnish to English. There is also a whole book Saamelaiskiista on the topic, available only in Finnish, that I might have to translate into English for our brothers and sisters on the other sides of the border.

First it needs to be pointed out that the history of the Sámi on the Finnish side of border is very well documented. “The history of the Sámi has been extensively studied, and archives hold a wealth of written sources and historical material. (Veli-Pekka Lehtola 2022, pp. 143). This needs to be emphasised: there is complete clarity on the history of the Sámi, and since the 1970’s forward the Sámi have themselves been integral part of the scientific processes in Finnish universities, including but not limited to, history, law, linguistics etc. As such, the Sámi are not completely chained by histories written by others.

Where did the New Lapp Movement emerge and why? “In the early 1990s, perceptions of Sámi history took on new shades in connection with societal change. As the significance of Sámi identity seemed to grow, it also became challenged and contested in new ways. The most visible development was the dispute between the Sámi and the local non-Sámi majority. In Finland, the Sámi were recognized as an Indigenous people in the 1995 Sámi Parliament Act and in the Finnish Constitution in 2000. How the rights of this Indigenous people should be implemented in accordance with international provisions became a focal point of heated debate. Finland, however, did not ratify the ILO Convention No. 169.” (Veli-Pekka Lehtola 2022, pp. 143–144.)

“At the same time as local non-Sámi rejected a greater Sámi role in land use, the struggle also extended into the history of Lapland. The earlier interest that local [Finnish] people had shown in local histories now took on a distinctly political tone. Because the rights of Indigenous Peoples were anticipated to bring additional benefits to the Sámi as an Indigenous people, the multiethnic history of Lapland began to be viewed from this perspective.” (Veli-Pekka Lehtola 2022, pp. 144.)

“The Lapps, who had previously been regarded with indifference or even condescension, came to be seen by many locals as ‘our ancestors,’ whose descendants were, in their view, just as entitled to [supposed] benefits as ‘the Sámi of today.’ The situation soon shifted to the point where locals began to see their roots as even more original than the Sámi – those of the reindeer Sámi in particular – who were cast as ‘immigrants.’ The New Lapp Movement understood ‘originality’ to mean those who could demonstrate the oldest ownership under the [settler-based] new farmsteads (uudistilat) system in their area. This explains the popularity of genealogical research, as each sought to date the founding of their forebears’ uudistila as far back in time as possible.” (Veli-Pekka Lehtola 2022, pp. 144–145.)

“However, the establishment of uudistila farmsteads cannot serve as proof of Indigenous status. The Sámi have emphasised belonging to the Sámi siida system, whose rights Nordic authorities replaced with their own concepts of real property rights. The Sámi began taking up farming relatively late – the Anár Sámi in the 18th century and the Vuohčču Sámi in the late 19th century. The Enontekiö reindeer Sámi maintained the traditional siida system the longest; in Finland, many of them only established farmsteads in the 1930s, at which point they were in practice landless Sámi.” (Veli-Pekka Lehtola 2022, pp. 144–145.)

The New Lapp Movement thus chose to compare themselves specifically to the reindeer Sámi – who, in terms of founding uudistila farms, ‘lost’ to them by a wide margin. Traditionally, reindeer Sámi had moved freely across what later became state borders, but with borders closing during the 19th century, states forced them to choose a nationality. The New Lapp Movement have portrayed this development as outright illegal immigration, even though many reindeer Sámi simply settled permanently in their former usufruct areas. By generalising the Sámi population as nothing more than reindeer Sámi, New Lapp narratives cast all contemporary Sámi as trampling on the rights of the ‘original’ inhabitants. (Veli-Pekka Lehtola 2022, pp. 144–145.)

“Fears over the Indigenous ILO Convention and the prospect of new arrangements for land use in the Sámi homeland began to produce a flood of historical interpretations in which the local population of Lapland rewrote the ‘true history’ of Lapland. In other words, history was now being mined for the purpose of political influence – namely, to gain voting rights in the Sámi Parliament. At the heart of this argument were the Lapps of the past – but presented not as the ancestors of present-day Sámi, but as the forebears of ‘true heritage’ guardians among the local population, those whom ‘elite Sámi’ refused to recognise as members of the Sámi Parliament. The irony was that while these reinterpretations of history sought to gain entry into the Sámi Parliament, their clear aim was also to undermine the credibility of the Sámi’s current representative body.” (Veli-Pekka Lehtola 2022, pp. 144–145.)

Opponents of the Sámi deliberately appropriated the term Lapps, though they also used terms such as metsälappalainen (“forest Lapp”), metsäsaamelainen (“forest Sámi”), and “statusless Sámi.” In the light of recent debated in various social media platforms, this deliberate blurring of terms has lead to confusion outside Finnish borders – unlike the true Forest Sámi in Swedish side of the border, the ones claiming to have Sámi identity in the Finnish side have assimilated to the local Finnish culture over the past 300 years. It needs to be emphasised that no one in the Finnish side is contesting the identity or culture of the true Forest Sámi in Sweden, who have retained their culture in the face of assimilation attempts by the church and the state over history.

“Conceptual blurring was characteristic of the New Lapp Movement. This also applied to the term ‘Indigenous people’: descendants of Finnish settlers sought to prove, with homestead (uudistila) founding documents, that they had been here first. The interpretations of the New Lapp Movement rested on the fact that one of their ancestors in Lapland had been counted as a Finnish settler. By blurring concepts, the New Lapp Movement fostered the belief that Lapland had always been home to two groups – the Lapps and the Sámi – of which the Lapps were the older community.” (Veli-Pekka Lehtola 2022, pp. 145–148.) This is of course not true. The Sámi have been called the Lapps by outsiders, whereas the usage of Sámi has recently been adopted by the majority society as well. As such, no distinct “Lapp” from the “Sámi” has ever existed.

“Historian Mauno Hiltunen observes that the New Lapp Movement’s search for roots resulted in a ‘history-politically tinged interpretation, containing outright mythology,’ the results of which he calls ‘northern new myths.’ Identifying as a distinct group – the Lapps – required its own history, a cultural narrative whose components were drawn from genealogical research, various source materials, and a selective use of existing scholarship. According to Hiltunen, history has become for the counter-movement [the New Lapp Movement] ‘a kind of court of law.’ This has led to the falsification of history and the creation of myths, because the burden of proof has been shaped into demonstrating that the Sámi were newcomers while characterising their own ancestors as the Indigenous people.” (Veli-Pekka Lehtola 2022, pp. 145–148.)

“Hiltunen notes that the New Lapp Movement specifically seeks to prove its roots on the basis of settler history and criticises its focus on genealogy as a channel for proving Sámi identity. They take no account whatsoever of changes in ethnicity over time. In Hiltunen’s view, it is clear that the New Lapp Movement had lost its original culture and had become part of the northern peasant culture. The New Lapp Movement has therefore elevated historical interpretations above all else in the search for its own identity. As Hiltunen remarks, history can help us understand the events of the past – but it cannot provide answers for the present.” (Veli-Pekka Lehtola 2022, pp. 145–148.)

“The conscious construction of a New Lapp Movement version of history began already in the 1990s. The ‘Lapp village associations’ of Ivalojoki, Kyrö, Peltojärvi, and Suonttavaara [settler colonies] published a pamphlet titled ‘Information for the Sámi Debate,’ in which defenders of the Sámi were criticised for a lack of expertise and Sáminess was opposed as ‘a political movement’ born in the 1960s ‘through the actions of a few young activists.’ The associations perceived a conspiracy between the Sámi and historians to conceal information about Lapland’s ‘true’ Indigenous people, and they criticised the Sámi for lacking ‘the right kind of family roots and documents.’” (Veli-Pekka Lehtola 2022, pp. 145–148.)

“In light of established historical research on Lapland, the interpretation of a forgotten metsälappalainen (‘forest Lapp’) culture alongside the Sámi groups known today is pure fantasy. The history of the Finnish forest Sámi has been thoroughly studied, and it involves no mystique. Some assimilated and became Finnish, while others remained ethnically Sámi, and their histories lead directly to today’s [living] Sámi groups [that is: to us]. There are no mysterious, forgotten peoples to be found – the tax authorities made sure of that centuries ago.” (Veli-Pekka Lehtola 2022, pp. 145–148.)

 
Hirvas-Lasse Aila Antero Janne
(Janne Hirvasvuopio)

References

*This text is translated from “Lehtola, Veli-Pekka. Entiset elävät meissä (2022). Gaudeamus.”

In-text citations and references are available in the original text.