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Nobody knows exactly how many Sami live in Norway. One of the reasons for this is that we have established as an official policy that we do not register the ethnicity of citizens. Therefore, according to Statistics Norway, there are few statistics about the Sami as a group or groups of Sami.
However, there is one exception, and that is the Sámi Parliament Electoral Register – a register of all Sámi who have chosen to be registered as part of the population through the National Register.
Now there is a heated dispute between various Sami groups over who is Sami and who is not – and consequently who can vote in the Sami parliamentary elections.
There has been a strong growth in the Sami population in recent years, and this has occurred at the same time as increasing political contradictions between groups seeking to preserve the traditional Sami way of life and the Sami seeking economic development.
On one side is the Norwegian Sami National Confederation (NSR) with the Sami parliament speaker Silje Karine Muotka – on the other side is the Nordkalottfolket. In the last election in 2021, the National Association of Norwegian Sami received 31.9 percent of the vote, while Nordkalottfolket almost doubled its number of votes to become the second largest party with 18.3 percent.
Read more: Election results of the 2021 Sami parliamentary election
In the last ten years, the number of Sami has increased from around 15,000 to 23,500, an increase of almost 60 percent. By far the biggest growth is in southern Norway, and Oslo is about to overtake Karaskjok and Kautokeino as the largest Sámi city.
You can register electronically if one of three relatively general criteria is met:
- You have Sami as your native language
- You have or had a parent, grandparent or great-grandparent whose native language is Sami.
- If you are the child of a person who is or was registered on the electoral roll, you can apply to be entered on the electoral roll.
(Source: The Sámi Parliament regarding the introduction to the number of voters of the Sámi Parliament)
Research hunt for “cheats”
Now the majority in the Sami parliament has decided to ask Telemarksforskning to analyze the number of voters in what the Nordkalott people call the hunt for the “fraudulent Sami”. The Nordkalott people respond by asking the district court to stop the investigation because they believe it is an illegal ethnicity check.
The Telemark research will examine whether those who have registered in the Sami population feel they meet the requirements for registration and then assess whether the criteria should be changed or updated to be included in the register become.
Lead researcher Monica Bjerklund clarifies that the survey is anonymous and has no meaning for people who complete the survey but do not meet the criteria for inclusion on the electoral roll.
Sandra Borch and Lars Monsen
Nordkalottfolket refers to an article by Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Tromsø, Ivar Bjørklund, which discusses Sámi identity – and which suggests that some adopt a Sámi identity because it can be politically and economically profitable.
– In this context, Sandra Borch was cited for her Sámi affiliation and the associated desire to be elected to the Sámi parliament, while Lars Monsen made a similar argument so that his tourism industry could expand in a southern Sámi reindeer herding area. The series of similar examples is long, writes Bjørklund in a reader’s article in the Sami newspaper Sagat.
The position is included in the agreement between the Sami Parliament and Telemarksforskning, and the Nordkalott population believes that the Sami Parliament is using Sandra Borch and Lars Monsen as examples of people who only appear as Sami to gain an advantage .
“Completely scandalous”
– NSR (Norwegian Sami National Federation) and the Labor Party have long argued that there are so many “fraudulent Sami” among us. Nevertheless, it is frightening and disappointing to see that the Sami parliament, headed by the plenary chairman of the Labor Party, defines its compatriots in public newspapers as fictional and fortune hunters. And not only that, they also take the liberty of hanging people whose names are mentioned and will use this as a basis for their investigations, says Toril Bakken Kåven, leader of the Nordkalottfolket group in the Sami Parliament.
– This is completely scandalous, you can hardly believe what you read. It remains to be hoped that those mentioned do not take this to heart and understand that we other Sámi compatriots warmly welcome them to take part in the elections to the Sámi Parliament, to which they of course have a right together with the rest of us Sámi citizens, says the parliamentary leader of the Nordkalott people in the Sami parliament Toril Bakken Kåven.
Read more: Taking the Census Case to District Court
Charts cheat
The Sámi Parliament Speaker Silje Karina Moutka is the Sámi Parliament Speaker of the Norwegian Sámi National Association. She wants to determine how many people have registered to vote without being Sámi and calls them people who violate Sámi law.
Now the majority, which includes the Norwegian Sami National Association, the Center Party, Flyttsamelista and the Workers’ Party, will conduct the anonymous survey to determine whether the registered people meet both the subjective and objective criteria – that is, whether both they feel Sámi and whether they meet at least one of the objective criteria.
In addition to the dispute between the various Sámi parties, the civil ombudsman also intervened by demanding that the names of census participants be made public.
The fight for the Sami number is heating up.
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