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#Post#: 25262--------------------------------------------------
An Overdue Reckoning: How Sweden Continues to Deny Its Settler-C
olonial Past
By: Schwartze Katze Date: February 29, 2024, 11:14 am
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An Overdue Reckoning: How Sweden Continues to Deny Its
Settler-Colonial Past
[quote]Linnea Axelsson on Scandinavia’s Hidden History of
Indigenous Oppression[/quote]
[quote]For the past decades, the two communities of which I am a
part—Sámi, from the part of Sápmi that falls within Sweden’s
borders, and the Swedish majority society—have been developing
in different directions. The former is making an effort to take
a close look at history in order to slowly move towards greater
openness. However, large parts of the latter seem to be
rewriting history as a pure fantasy of Swedishness. In doing so
the Swedish majority society is closing itself off to the
outside world.
Among Sámi organizations, in everyday encounters and elsewhere,
there is a palpable desire to do away with the cultural
stereotypes to which we ourselves have been reduced—that is,
ideas about what the Sámi people are and can be as shaped by
centuries of colonialism. Unfortunately many of Sweden’s leading
politicians are busy working towards another end.
As if fever-driven, they’re constructing the image of a Swedish
ur-nation inhabited by a single homogenous people, a nation now
being ravaged by foreign, inferior cultures. This imagined
endangered, original Swedish society does a good job of
concealing the reality of Sweden today—the vast gaps between the
social classes, the alienation and gang violence that rose
alongside the dismantling of the welfare state. (Decade upon
decade, Sweden’s supportive structures have been eroded, along
with the citizenry’s power to influence them. The deregulated
Swedish school system may be the gravest example.)
From a Sámi perspective, Sweden is a nation that will still only
confess to “historical oppression” and “abuse” in order to avoid
looking at itself in the mirror and having to use the word
“colonialism.”
At the crux of this is the Western attitude that uses cultural
supremacy to justify its plundering.
Sámi society, which weaves through Norway, Sweden, Finland and
Russia, differs from these nation-states in a number of ways. A
fundamental distinction is how the culture and some of its means
of livelihood are in various ways connected to and predicated
upon on reindeer husbandry, a way of life that has survived
despite settler colonialism, despite the ongoing climate crisis
and despite the rift between the Sámi people caused by the state
regulation of reindeer husbandry.
There have been a number of recent editorial in Dagens Nyheter,
Sweden’s largest daily newsletter, one of which gets to the crux
of the rift between Sámi who herd reindeer and those who do not,
an artificial distinction asserted by the Swedish state when it
drafted the current legal framework for reindeer husbandry and
did so without any knowledge and consideration of or interest in
Sámi society’s own structure and modes of cooperation.
It is this piece of legislation that divided the Sámi into two
groups: reindeer herders and non-reindeer herders. True Sámi,
per this framework, were reindeer-herding Sámi from the
mountains and to be protected from civilization. All other Sámi
would be forcibly assimilated into Swedish society; they were to
become Swedes and forget their language, culture and traditions;
the reindeer husbandry laws have thus not only caused a rift in
Sámi society, but have also reached inside the individual, into
their sense of identity, belonging and value.
The reindeer-herding Sámi gather in samebyar, or Sámi villages,
which are not villages per se but an economic and administrative
union in a geographical area where members have the right to
engage in reindeer herding, and there the total amount of
reindeer is regulated by the state. Each new member inducted
into a Sámi village must be given a share of the pre-allocated
number of reindeer, which are to coexist on land that is also
being used by mining, forestry and wind power industries.
Information about this chapter in Swedish-Sámi history is
readily available, yet none of these articles describe how the
eye of this needle came to be and is to this day maintained by
colonial politics. Instead the journalist portrays herders as
part of a malicious club working against their own interests and
the interests of all other Swedes, and who, through through
legal finagling, are trying to assert their claim on more than
half of Sweden’s land.
Furthermore, herders are portrayed as a threat to outdoor life
in Swedish national parks, despite the fact these parks were
often established on traditionally indigenous land where people
are already working, living, and gathering medicine and
materials and food—land that visitors are invited to “discover”
as a beautiful wilderness with excellent opportunity for
recreation.
A decade after the area around Stora Sjöfallet (or The Great
Falls, also once called the “Niagara Falls of the North”), the
region I come from, was designated as a national park, its
status as a site of natural preservation was simply revoked so
that the associated river could be further regulated to better
supply the electrical grid. The eponymous great waterfall is now
but a memory. Even so, it is the Swedish state that is asserted
as the protector of these lands, not the Sámi herders. As some
would have it, these Sámi can hardly be said to steward their
land anymore, now that they’ve started using motorized vehicles
to get around.
Here is an echo of a time when indigenous cultures were to be
shielded from modernity, to be “preserved” as if in a bell jar.
When, in addition to skis, snowmobiles are added to the
equation, a Sámi is said to be forsaking tradition; but if a
Sámi uses only skis, they are considered primitive and incapable
of adapting to the modern world.
When I try to put my finger on what about these texts is
unsettling, I end up pointing to their intentions: the choice of
angle and information. If you aim for the truth but insist on
placing the scope just off-center, you end up with a skewed
shot. Thus, by consistently choosing to ignore history,
indigenous people fighting for their rights are transformed into
a greedy minority fighting for special privileges. And this
reframing takes place under the guise of scrutinizing said
“privileges,” instead of openly declaring what lies at the core
of the endeavor: the opinion that colonialization was the
correct path because it has benefited Sweden.
Sápmi has begun its reckoning, but Sweden continues to look
away.
These editorials hold a bitter brew. They have a particular way
of turning a deaf ear to history and simply describing the
situation as the writer would prefer it to be, an impulse that
can also be observed in those who hold power and sway the world
over. Also at the crux of this is the Western attitude that uses
cultural supremacy to justify its plundering, reasoning that the
value of nature is purely monetary, down to the last tree, the
last fish, the last stream, and insisting that one is being
superior to all others in every way, rather than imagining that
we have something to learn from each other.
A culture like this, by definition, can never see itself as a
colonizer. This culture has a grand plan of constant
improvement, and every related project and strategy is worth the
cost. A culture like this will never comprehend the paradox of
wanting to destroy nature in order to save nature, which is what
“the green transition” is all about. This plan for a greener
future is just more of the same. Civilization will continue as
usual, but will now be plugged into a new, green grid. (As if it
is a foregone conclusion that we want even more mines. After
all, in these new mines other metals will be mined than were
being mined before!) And at the heart of all this, of course, is
the same old dirty story of money. Had Sápmi not been located in
a part of Sweden full of forests, minerals and rivers, this
situation would look very different.
The grand history of nation-states is inevitably a history of
lies and theft and formidable powers of imagination, as well as
varying degrees of coercion and death. Nothing is easy about
renegotiating one’s self-perception. Sápmi has begun its
reckoning, but Sweden continues to look away. Sweden does look
to the past, but with a false, nostalgic gaze. Its vision of
history can only lead the country into a narrow and isolated
future.[/quote]
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