The Russian Saami

The Russian Federation is home to over 100 ethnic groups or nationalities including the indigenous peoples of the Russian North. The indigenous peoples have endured decades and centuries of colonization. In the Soviet Union, herds were collectivized and indigenous peoples were forcibly Russified and Sovietized. The traditional lands of the indigenous peoples were often devastated by the impacts of industrialization (mining as well as the oil and gas industry) of militarization. The consequences of Soviet and later Russian policies have had their impact on the indigenous peoples of the Russian North. The BBC has published an excellent piece on the Saami (or Sami) of the Kola Peninsula. Below, is an excerpt from this article.

The Sami people's traditional way of life has been under assault for decades as they have been gradually forced off arctic Russia's fertile tundra grazing-land and into artificially created towns.

Much of the displacement was caused by a steady expansion of industry, forestry and mining, and the arrival of hundreds of thousands of workers from other parts of the Soviet Union - many of them arriving as forced labourers in Gulag camps.

Then, during the Cold War, Sami coastal fishermen were ordered to move away from the shores of the Barents Sea, which is currently littered with secretive navy installations, and reindeer herders were forced away from a 200-mile exclusion zone that ran along the Cold War frontier.

To this day, the few who still herd reindeer complain about bored and hungry soldiers who use their machine guns to shoot their animals.

Urban Sami, meanwhile, bemoan the way powerful tourist companies prevent them carrying out their fishing traditions in Voronya River or Lovozero Lake.

"We are not used to private property rights, and we are not used to competing," laments Vatonena Lyubov, vice president of the Association of Kola Sami.

"We will never regain our grazing lands and our rivers."