Greta Thunberg protests against Sweden’s iron mine on indigenous Sami land
STOCKHOLM (AFP) – The Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg and members of the Nordic country’s indigenous Sami community protested on Saturday (February 5) against a possible iron ore mine in northern Sweden.
The government will next month decide on the green light for the controversial project led by the British company Beowulf, which has promised to create 250 to 300 jobs in the area.
But the Sami, of whom an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 live in Sweden, say that the plan will prevent reindeer herding, disrupt hunting and fishing and destroy the environment in their home country.
“We believe that the climate, the environment, clean air, water, reindeer husbandry, the rights of indigenous peoples and the future of humanity should be given priority over a company’s short-term profits,” Thunberg said in an English-language video.
“The Swedish government must stop the colonization of Sapmi”, she added and used a term for Sami land.
Stina Lanta, a young resident of the village of Jahkagasska near the proposed Kallak mine, said she was worried.
“A mine would have a permanent negative impact on our pastures,” she said.
The European Union’s only indigenous people, an estimated 100,000 Sami, live across the vast Arctic wilderness of northernmost Finland, Norway and Sweden, as well as Russia’s Kola Peninsula.
For much of the 20th century, governments condemned indigenous peoples and their culture as uncivilized and inferior.
Over the past five years, Finland, Norway and Sweden have intensified measures to atone for past injustices, set up truth and reconciliation commissions and repatriated stolen Sami objects.
But the Sami claim that their rights continue to be unrecognized, and point to, for example, the government’s plans to open up parts of their mineral-rich homeland to mining companies.