Whose settler colonial state? Arctic Railway, state transformation and settler self-indigenization in Northern Finland

ABSTRACT

Settler colonial theory has effectively highlighted the continuity of colonial structures, but less attention has been paid on how also the settler state has transformed over time, and how such changes have affected the manifold relationships between the state, the settlers and the natives. This article addresses trajectories of settler colonial change in Finland, building on theories of state spatial transformation and taking the recurring plans to build a Railway across the Sámi homeland as its point of departure. The article suggests that central to the change is the destabilization of the relationship between the state and Northern Finland’s older, ‘endogenous’ settler communities. This has facilitated a popular turn to settler self-Indigenization, whereby settlers make new claims to being ‘Indigenous’, usually building on records of a distant (possibly) Indigenous ancestor. Since self-Indigenization directly challenges Indigenous self-determination, it articulates a new form of elimination of the native. The task for critical scholarship is not only to situate, contextualize and challenge such identity claims, but also to question the logic that continues to set especially older settler communities in opposition to Indigenous rights and self-determination, in the context of extractive and neoliberal development that ultimately may undermine both.

KEYWORDS:

• Endogenous communities
• Nordic colonialism
• race-shifting
• Sámi
• extractive infrastructure

Introduction

Today, there is growing agreement that also the Nordic states and societies may be considered as settler colonial in their relationship to the Indigenous Sámi people and their territories.¹ The turn is important, because instead of limiting inquiry to the colonial past, the settler colonial analytic brings attention to the colonial present and to the contemporaneity of the structures, practices and policies through which the Nordic states and societies actively continue to assimilate, erode or eliminate the Sámi today. What remains less explored, however, are the many ways in which the Nordic states have also transformed over time, for instance in terms of their economic and political rationalities, governmental techniques and considerations of state space, and how such changes affect the articulation of settler colonialism and the manifold relationships between the state, settlers and the Sámi.

This article’s aim is to interrogate such trajectories of settler colonial change in Finland, building on theories of state spatial transformation and using the Arctic Railway plan as its point of departure. The Arctic Railway is a recurring railroad plan which, if ever built, would pass from Rovaniemi in Northern Finland to the coast of the Arctic Ocean, cutting through the Sámi homeland region, Sápmi. The railway has been proposed and planned variously since the late nineteenth Century, and in the 2010s, the project was once again reinvigorated following its inclusion in Finland’s Arctic Strategy. According to the strategy, it would help Finland to seize the opportunity to become an important logistical nodal point in the context of a rapidly changing Arctic region. However, the Sámi have strongly objected, claiming that its construction would exacerbate extractive and colonial pressure on Sámi lands and culture, and even put an end to Sámi reindeer herding in the Eastern part of Sápmi. Over the past years, the plan has again been formally buried as unviable.

Attention to the Arctic Railway project brings forth not only the contemporaneity of Finnish colonialism, but also significant changes in the state’s character and in the relationships between the state, the Sámi and the settlers. One aspect of the change, I argue, is the destabilization of the relationship between the state and Northern Finland’s older settler communities, whose previous value as settlers can no longer be taken for granted. Together with the rise of Indigenous rights, this has contributed to a growing insecurity of settler identities and facilitated a popular turn to settler self-Indigenization whereby Northern Finland’s ethnic Finns - individuals and groups that belong to communities that are rooted in the history of Finnish settlement - make new claims to being ‘Indigenous’, often building on archival records of a distant (possibly) Sámi ancestor, yet without connection to an existing Sámi community or kin.² In Finland, settler self-Indigenization has taken the shape of well-organized populist social movements, which channel local settler anxieties and desires while challenging and obstructing the development of Indigenous rights and self-determination. As such, settler self-Indigenization not only articulates a new form of settler colonial elimination, but also prevents more fruitful forms of interaction between Sámi and Northern Finland’s ‘older settler communities.

I begin by discussing the study’s theoretical premises, followed by a short inquiry to the Arctic Railway plan and its links with contemporary colonialism. In the second part, the focus is on the changing relationships between the Finnish state, the Sámi and the settlers. In addition to existing research, the study builds on ‘ethnographic fragments’,³ or on a patchwork of qualitatively diverse materials and sources that are necessary to approach settler colonial change across various levels and sites of analysis, including the transnational, national, regional and local. Such materials include Finnish government reports and strategy documents; statements and open letters by the Sámi Parliament and Sámi organizations; media texts and interviews; promotional materials, including websites, videos and advertisement, as well as excerpts from film and the social media. These materials are brought together to pursue and analyse the complex interconnections between the Arctic Railway project, settler colonial change and settler self-Indigenization.

Settlers and settler colonialism in Finland

Sápmi, the homeland of the Sámi, extends across the Northern parts of Scandinavia and the Kola Peninsula, covering an area that is now divided by Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Although the borders do not define the Sámi as a people, they complicate analysis of Nordic colonialism, as in each state, the history of settlement and state policies towards the Sámi have followed different pathways.⁴

Finland as a state did not exist until 1917. Before independence, Finland was an autonomous part of the Russian Empire (1809–1917), and prior to that, it belonged to the Kingdom of Sweden. The history of Finnish settlement (uudisasutus in Finnish), however, exceeds the nation state: it has taken place over centuries and in several cycles, each with its own economic and governmental rationalities, and involving Sámi withdrawal (northwards), dispossession (as a result of settlement expansion and legislation) as well as assimilation (from nomadic to agrarian livelihoods and Finnish culture and community).⁵

Having said that, Finnish settlement has not always been considered in the state’s best interest. Under the Swedish Crown and until the late seventeenth Century, Finnish agrarian settlement in Sápmi was hindered by lapinraja or ‘Lapland border’, a fiscal and administrative boundary which differentiated between Sámi (or ‘Lapp’) and peasant forms of land use. North of the border, the nomadic livelihoods of the Sámi were considered more viable (and thus, taxable), and settlement was formally not allowed nor encouraged.⁶ However, by the late 1600s, state’s interests in the region begun to change and agrarian settlement were increasingly promoted. In addition to the influx of Finnish settlers across the Lapland border and Sámi withdrawal, this resulted locally in Sámi assimilation, as over time, many adapted to the culture and livelihoods of the Finnish peasants and became part of the settler society themselves.⁷

In the mid-nineteenth century, timber became increasingly valued, and thus securing land under state ownership became a central policy objective in Northern Finland. Settlement was still encouraged, but settlement was also considered a risk to the state’s interest in forestry. Therefore, both settler and Sámi access to land had to be limited and carefully governed through elaborate policies and legislation that sought to promote settlement while minimizing settler entitlement to land and timber.⁸ This has contributed to the fact that today, a staggering ninety percent of land in the Sámi homeland region in Finland is considered by the state as ‘state land’ (valtion maa), which is under the stewardship of Metsähallitus, a state-run Forest and Park Service that was established for the purpose in 1859.⁹ The Sámi homeland region itself is now limited to the four northernmost municipalities of the Lapland province.¹⁰ Although Finns are a majority also there, it is the region where legislation relating to Sämi cultural autonomy, established in 1996, applies.

Given this history, Sámi political scientist Rauna Kuokkanen has recently argued that the Finnish state is fundamentally settler colonial in its relationship to the Sámi.¹¹ She highlights that settler colonialism in Finland is in many ways unique, not least because instead of arriving from the overseas, settlers originally came to the Sámi region from the southern parts of the contemporary state, and because historically, Sámi rights and ownership to land were formally recognized.¹² However, since the seventeenth Century and particularly from the nineteenth Century onwards, Finnish settlement activity expanded significantly, driven by growing interest in the region’s natural resources and encouraged by active state policies and legislation. In practice, the result has been the same as in other settler colonies: fragmentation of Indigenous lands, eradication of Indigenous traditional systems of governance and gradual (and in some parts complete) assimilation to the majority society.¹³

From an analytical point of view, all Finns may thus today be considered as settlers in their relationship to the Sámi, insofar as the settler colonial analytic refers to the structures, laws, policies and practices through which the contemporary Finnish state continues to secure its hold of, and exploit, the lands and natural resources that used to sustain Sámi peoples and cultures. Without excluding such broader meaning, here I use the word mainly for those families and communities whose roots in the region go back to earlier phases of settlement, i.e. to the period up until the early twentieth century when the promotion of agrarian settlement above the historical Lapland border was part of active state policy.¹⁴ These older settler communities have historically relied on, and competed for the same lands, natural resources and livelihoods as the Sámi. Although the ethos and culture of land and natural resource use between them and the Sámi might differ in some significant ways,¹⁵ over centuries also their identities, cultural histories and livelihoods have come to depend on a strong relationship to the land, place and the environment.

Settler colonialism as a paradigm of change

The relations between the settlers, the state and the natives are foundational for the settler colonial analytic. Patrick Wolfe originally argued that settler colonialism differs from traditional or plantation colonialism especially in terms of its relationship to the native population.¹⁶ For instance, in India, the colonial administration’s main objective was to exploit India's natural resources for the benefit of a motherland in faraway Europe. In this equation, natives were vital, as workforce, and as middlemen serving the regional colonial government. Settler colonialism, by contrast, is focused on the land itself, and thus the native appears more as a barrier than a resource. In addition to their resistance against land dispossession, their mere existence delegitimizes settler attempts to imagine themselves as the rightful owners of terra nullius, the new land. This locks settlers in a continuous, structural need to ‘eliminate’ the native as a people, through various practices. For example, in the early stages of the colonization of North America when settlement focused on territorial conquest, the logic of elimination was implemented literally through the physical extermination of the native peoples and their societies. By the time the settlers had taken over the entire continent, forced assimilation through the structures and policies of the settler colonial state became the key instrument.¹⁷

Wolfe’s theory, and the broader field of settler colonial studies that it informs, brings attention to the contemporaneity of colonial relations and practices as well as to the political problematic of Indigenous struggles, on which postcolonial theory has had remarkably less to say. But, its growing influence has also exposed the theory to Indigenous and non-Indigenous critique. For instance, several scholars have raised concerns around the ongoing canonization of settler colonial studies around a few white, predominantly male settler scholars, at the cost of Indigenous studies and the rich tradition of native, black and feminist criticism that also informs it.¹⁸ Moreover, critics have pointed out that the search for ‘elimination’ is prone to becoming an end in itself, a self-fulfilling exercise which is reproduced invariably across different locations. Such research agenda leaves little space for exploring other processes and forms of agency, native resistance, or potential for positive change. Hence, critics argue that unless scholars actively challenge the sense of structural inevitability and engage also Indigenous agency, the main effect of settler colonial theory could be to reify and reaffirm, rather than undo, settler colonial dominance.¹⁹ Engagement with the theory’s transformative potential and refusal to portray settler colonialism as ‘unchanging’ is particularly important when the scholars themselves (such as myself) are non-Indigenous.²⁰

In light of this, it seems pertinent to ask, what kind of broader social and political analyses and interventions does the framework of settler colonialism enable? How can settler colonial studies move away from merely ‘exposing’ settler colonialism, toward its complex understanding, and even to challenging it, for instance by amplifying its fractures and internal inconsistencies? In this regard, Nancy Shoemaker’s critique of settler colonial studies appears particularly instructive.²¹ She argues that the stark difference between traditional and settler colonialism that some of its proponents propose is actually a sliding one, as colonialism can also take many other forms, which may follow one another, or exist side-by-side. Subsequently, she lists eleven other possible categories, of which extractive colonialism might be most relevant for the Nordic countries. According to Shoemaker, extractive colonialism takes interest only in the raw materials found in a particular locale. Extractive colonizers might push away Indigenous inhabitants to secure access to the resources, but more typically they depend on the native for ‘diplomatic mediation, environmental knowledge, and labour’.²² Extractive colonialism doesn’t presume permanent occupation, but settlement often follows. Hence, long-term extractive colonialism can lead to the formation of settlements and thus, of settler colonial relations and regimes.

Another category with direct relevance to this study is transport colonialism, which operates through the establishment and administration of international transport corridors and logistical nodal points. Like extractive colonialism, transport colonialism does not necessitate permanent settlement, but by creating new economic, political and cultural contact zones, it facilitates cultural assimilation, or gradual ‘elimination’ of native cultures and livelihoods. ‘The many varieties of colonialism and their points of intersection’, Shoemaker concludes, ‘suggest that historians could elaborate on the trend started by settler colonial studies and more precisely investigate colonialization processes as multifaceted affairs that affected colonizers, the colonized, landholding, labour, and migration in myriad ways’.²³

Railways have been particularly central for colonial and imperial expansion. As such, they can provide a valuable starting point for the study of colonialism in its historically different manifestations. In Africa and India, railways were needed to secure control and to extract the colonies’ natural resources for export. In North America, railways became central engines of settler colonialism. Deborah Cowen, who studies the Canadian Pacific Railroad (CPS) to ‘follow the infrastructures of empire’, and to trace the ‘making of settler colonial space’, as well as its ‘afterlives and refusals’,²⁴ shows how the railway, completed under British rule in 1881, enabled settler colonial occupation and native dispossession in myriad ways. Its construction necessitated import of workforce which later became settlers, and over time, led to the establishment of railway towns, promotion of settler agriculture, and large-scale buffalo hunting. Although the CPS therefore could be regarded as thoroughly ‘settler colonial’, Cowen highlights that settler or Canadian interests were not the driving force behind its construction. Instead, the project was driven by military and merchant elites in faraway Britain, who in the mid-nineteenth century worried about the growing rivalry between the British Empire and the United States over global dominance.²⁵ Exploring the Railroad merely as an instrument of settler colonialism would thus neglect multiple other frameworks that are also relevant to understanding its meanings, functions and impact, such as British imperialism, international geopolitics and the history of global trade.

Building on these insights, I will next turn to the Arctic Railway project, to follow and trace processes in Finland that can be considered as settler colonial, but not to the exclusion of other available frameworks. The primary objective is to explore how settler colonialism has evolved along with changes in the international environment and the character of the state, and how such changes affect the ways in which the colonial relations and practices are articulated in the present.

The Arctic Railway project

In March 2018, Finland’s Ministry of Transport and Communications announced that it was taking steps to build a new ‘Arctic Railway’ across Northern Finland. Together with the Norwegian transport authorities, they had assessed five routing options and selected the route from Rovaniemi to the Norwegian port town Kirkenes for further examination. In its press release, the Ministry described the Arctic Railway as an important European project that ‘would create a closer link between the northern, Arctic Europe and continental Europe’ and ‘improve the conditions for many industries in northern areas’.²⁶ According to Minister Anne Berner, the new connection could be in use as early as in 2030 (Figure 1).²⁷

Figure 1. The railway routing from Rovaniemi to Kirkenes, as proposed by the Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communication in 2018. Copyright: Tero Juuti.

The idea is not new as such: a railway that would connect mainland Finland with the Arctic Ocean has been explored variously since the late nineteenth century. The early plans were made collaboratively by Russians and Finns, then Germans, and driven by regional mineral discoveries and military considerations.²⁸ In 1917, Finland declared independence from Russia, and three years later, Russia ceded to Finland the coastal Pechenga region which was the homeland of the Skolt Sámi people. In the new context, the Railway came to symbolize the rise of the Finnish nation. Its passionate advocates argued that a railroad to the Arctic coast would help the nation-state harness the Northern regions’ boundless natural riches for the benefit of its own people, consolidate Finland’s grip of the coastal area amid competing state interest, and facilitate its settlement with ‘decent and right kind of settlers’, i.e. Finnish agriculturalists.²⁹ In the 1930s, the discovery of large nickel deposits in Pechenga renewed interest in the project,³⁰ and in the 1940s, it was again the German troops’ turn to briefly explore it.³¹ No construction was ever undertaken, however, as in each case, further studies exposed the project as too economically unviable and far too laborious.³² At the end of the Second World War, Finland lost Pechenga to the Soviet Union. As the region became an arena for the Cold War, the project was put to rest for decades.

By the first decade of the 2000s, the situation had again changed. The ‘iron curtain’ no longer dictated the region’s development. Moreover, as a result of global warming, the Arctic region’s vast natural resources are becoming more exposed for exploitation, and new shipping routes, such as the Northeast Passage between Europe and Asia, are expected to open up. That is why each Nordic state has begun to issue and regularly update its own Arctic strategy, which lists their goals, interests and visions for the region. Finland’s first Strategy for the Arctic region, issued in 2010 and updated in 2013 and 2016, imagined Northern Finland as a central transport corridor and logistical hub that could cater to the Arctic region’s growing transport needs and serve as a bridge between mainland Europe, the Arctic and Asia.³³ The Arctic Railway project participates in this vision. It was brought up most prominently in the strategy update from 2013, which framed it mainly in relation to the Barents region’s oil, natural gas and mining industries.³⁴ As such it articulates both extractive and transport colonialism as described by Shoemaker: its stated aim is to facilitate natural resource extraction in Northern Finland and the Arctic at large, to connect the Arctic with mainland Europe, and to serve the needs of global logistics and trade with China as the new key player.

In addition, the city of Rovaniemi, several northern municipalities, and the Regional Council of Lapland Province, have actively promoted the project. Together with the EU, they have since 2009 funded a lobbying firm The Arctic Corridor, which has as its sole aim to push for a railroad along the Rovaniemi-Kirkenes line. The initiative’s main target audience is international industry and investors. According to its website www.arcticcorridor.fi (in English only; supplementary material can be downloaded also in Chinese), the railway would facilitate Arctic oil, gas and mining industries, and together with the northern sea route, provide a new, shorter transport connection between Europe and Asia. The main argument is that the global logistical network is almost complete, with just one piece missing: the space between Rovaniemi and Kirkenes. What is not mentioned, is that the space doubles as the homeland of the Indigenous Sámi.

A colonial railway

When the Ministry announced the Arctic Railway plan in 2018, the Sámi Parliament of Finland was among the first to object. Established in 1996, it is the supreme political body which represents the Sámi in Finland, and implements Sámi cultural autonomy. Its powers are limited, as the definition of cultural autonomy is narrow, and excludes Sámi land rights.³⁵ However, since the Act on Sámi Parliament, which regulates cultural autonomy, recognizes traditional nature-based Sámi livelihoods as the key pillars of Sámi culture, authorities are legally obliged to negotiate with the Sámi Parliament in measures which may cause significant harm to such livelihoods within the Sámi homeland region. In addition to the Act on Sámi Parliament and Finland’s Constitution, the state’s duty to negotiate is grounded in provisions of international law and in established principles of Indigenous and human rights.

The first reason for objection was that when choosing the railway routing, the Ministry had failed to hear the Sámi Parliament in ways required by the law. The Ministry claimed that a formal meeting with the Sámi Parliament had been held in January 2018,³⁶ but according to Tiina Sanila-Aikio, at the time the president of the Sámi Parliament, this was not true. Though a meeting had taken place, the routing was not discussed, and the impression given to the Sámi representatives was that the project would not be carried out.³⁷ Later, she disclosed that the Sámi Parliament had originally learned about the plan by reading from the newspaper.³⁸

The second cause was the chosen routing. The Ministry had examined five optional routings (Figure 2), yet from the perspective of the Sámi, the route from Rovaniemi to Kirkenes was the worst of all. It would pass through the heartlands of three distinct Sámi groups, the North Sámi, the Anár Sámi and the Skolt Sámi, and, by cutting through up to six Sámi reindeer herding districts, maximize damage to reindeer husbandry which depends on large, unbroken pastures. Already under severe pressure from competing land use, a project of this scale would seriously threaten the livelihood’s future.³⁹

Figure 2. The five optional routings examined by the Ministry of Transport and Communication.

Also, worries about the railway’s indirect consequences were raised. For instance, the Sámi Parliament’s Youth Council argued that the construction of a costly railway would increase incentives to open the region’s natural resources for extractive exploitation, particularly mining and the forest industry. Instead of promoting economic activities and jobs that are ‘ultimately unsustainable’, they urged the state to respect and nurture the jobs and businesses that already exist in the area, and to give the traditional livelihoods that have existed in the region since time immemorial, the status they deserve.⁴⁰ Likewise, several other Sámi actors and organizations, as well as Finnish environmental groups, strongly opposed the project along similar lines. Their statements frame the project above all as a harbinger of extractive colonialism.⁴¹

Despite the objections and protests, the ministry set up a new joint working group to examine the proposed routing and the schedule of work in more detail. The new report was published in February 2019. Like every other feasibility study of the Arctic Railway since the late nineteenth Century, it concluded that the project would be economically unviable, at least for now, and thus it did not recommend its construction.⁴² Conversely, unlike any of the previous, it also stressed the importance of true, equal Sámi participation and influence on all levels of project planning. The report noted that both Finland and Norway are committed to the promotion and implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. If sufficient caution was not exercised and the rights of the Sámi were not respected, ‘a possible consequence could be a long-term conflict between Indigenous people, government authorities, the railway operator or other actors in the region’.⁴³

As a result, the Ministry had to formally suspend the plan, but a few months later, the project re-emerged, this time as a private, Finnish–Norwegian initiative funded by international investors and led by a prominent Finnish start-up entrepreneur. Whereas the state-run project emphasized the needs of the heavy industries, now the railway was rebranded in terms of green and sustainable development, carbon-free travel and ultramodern, creative high-tech solutions that would minimize possible harms to the Sámi and the environment.⁴⁴ Less effort was placed on actually engaging the Sámi: again, the Sámi Parliament first learned about the (new) project through the mainstream media, and also later, lack of attention to negotiations with the Sámi Parliament made headlines.⁴⁵ In addition, on the national level concerns over the private project’s reliance on foreign, especially Chinese funding provoked critical debate over its connections to China’s efforts to dominate world trade through investment in global transportation infrastructure.

At the moment, the state no longer promotes the idea openly. The Arctic Railway has been dropped from Finland’s most recent Strategy for Arctic Policy,⁴⁶ and also the private initiative has been on hold, as its front men focus on another railway project that would connect Finland with mainland Europe via an undersea tunnel. However, the Arctic railway continues to enjoy some support as a long-term plan, especially on the level of Lapland's municipal politics and regional government, and it is still occasionally brought up by various actors.⁴⁷⁴⁸ Together with the project’s long history, this is fuelling concerns that the project will pop up again once the conditions are more favourable. Writing on the mining industry, Lassila argues that also ‘mines on paper’ have substantial impacts upon the community, because they shape the community’s perceptions of possible futures, and thus the actions that are taken today.⁴⁹ Similarly, the Sámi have expressed that the mere existence of the plan, and the fact that the state has been willing to advance the project without consulting them or the reindeer herders, is highly distressing. This adds considerable pressure on young people to give up reindeer husbandry and to move outside the Sámi region to pursue other professions.⁵⁰ Even if never built, the Arctic Railway plan contributes to Sámi assimilation today.

Settler colonial change and state spatial transformation

The Arctic Railway project in the 2000s represents contemporary aspects of extractive and settler colonialism in Finland. So far, it has also followed a very similar trajectory to the one that all the previous plans to construct an Arctic Railway have done since the late nineteenth Century. As before, the project is driven mainly by the needs of natural resource extraction and by the state’s desire to consolidate its grip of the northern region. However, on a closer examination, the railroad has turned out too expensive to construct.

But differences also exist. First, unlike in the past, the Sámi views toward the project can no longer be completely ignored, as that would violate national and international laws and agreements, to which the state is now formally committed. Second, instead of following a territorially defined national agenda and goals of domestic development, today the project is advocated and designed primarily in relation to the interests and needs of transnational capital and global trade, in a manner which reflects a broader neoliberalization of the state and the international environment. Both are pivotal for understanding aspects of settler colonial change, for in addition to affecting the state’s relationship to land and territory, these changes are now reshaping the relationships between the state, the settlers and the natives.

I ground this argument especially on the work of political geographers and the associated theories of state spatial transformation. Prompted by neoliberal globalization, information technologies and their combined impact on state policies and sovereignty, their main premise is that the tasks that are assigned to the state change historically. In addition to affecting public policies that are carried out in its name, changes in the state’s character and rationale transform the state’s relationship to the state-space, i.e. the ways in which the state attaches meaning to the territories and borderlands that it governs, and by extension, to the peoples and communities that inhabit those spaces.⁵¹

In Finland, state transformation is generally analysed in terms of three different epochs or spatial regimes, which Sami Moisio and others conceptualize broadly as areal state, decentralized welfare state and (neoliberal) competition state.⁵² The areal state coincides with the first decades (1920s–1950s) of Finland’s national independence. Moisio and Vasanen argue that during this epoch, land, natural resources and economic profit tied to the exploitation of land formed the indisputable core dimension of Finland’s public policy.⁵³ Such rationality, I suggest, was particularly tangible in Pechenga, where the state’s primary concern was to ensure that the lands and natural resources of the ceded coastal region would be secured for the Finnish state. In this task, Finnish settlers had an important role, as settlement activity was needed to develop the region in terms of the Finnish agrarian society, which had the capacity to territorialize the land and make it more governable. However, their role remained highly instrumental: as expressed by Väinö Voionmaa, who was also an ardent advocate of the Arctic Railway in the 1920s, ‘the struggle to settle the Pechenga area’ was not about Finnish settlers or their interests, but rather, about ‘the interests of Finland as a whole’.⁵⁴ Those interests, in turn, were still defined by narrow national elites, which governed the country from the viewpoint of Helsinki.⁵⁵

In 1944, Finland lost Pechenga back to the Soviet Union and its access to the Arctic Ocean was again severed. Since also the eastern border with Russia was sealed by the Cold War, Northern Finland became a cul-de-sac that was logistically cut off. This notwithstanding, a gradual transition to a decentralized welfare state ensured that the period from the 1950s until the end of the 1980s came to stand for increasing prosperity.⁵⁶ In the context of post-war reconstruction and with the threat of communism across the border, unemployment became perceived as a major risk to social order, and thus the well-being and economic vitality of peripheral areas were considered important to safeguard political stability and state security. In this context, spatial cohesion, regional equality and social and economic welfare across the state-space became central objectives, which were pursued through ‘regional policy’ (aluepolitiikka), including geographic dispersion of the educational system and administrative institutions, provision of healthcare and other basic services also to scarcely populated areas, and state-led promotion of industrial development and transport infrastructures in accordance with the regional policy objectives.⁵⁷

In Northern Finland, the state’s main interest was still in natural resource extraction, especially timber and hydroelectricity. However, to secure lasting access and to prevent the risk of political instability, it could no longer simply settle the land: also the settlers’ social and economic well-being had to be promoted. For the Sámi, post-war reconstruction and the rise of the decentralized welfare state, which promoted industrialization and modernization in terms dictated by the Finnish society, presented a period of intensive assimilation resulting in a rapid decline of Sámi languages and culture, and a loss of traditional livelihoods. This, of course, does not mean that the Sámi would not have benefited from growing prosperity and social welfare as individuals.

Since the late 1980s, neoliberal globalization has pushed yet another shift, this time toward a neoliberal competition state, in which the state’s international competitiveness, rather than social and regional cohesion, is considered a key to economic and social flourishment.⁵⁸ Now state vitality is seen to depend on its ability to compete for the attention of international companies and venture capital, by making the state-space attractive to them. Conversely, the decentralized regional structures of the welfare state that were once promoted, appear increasingly as a hindrance to economic development. Thus, in the context of the competition state, one of the public policy’s core tasks has been to gradually dismantle such structures as too costly, and too heavy to administer. Moreover, instead of needing to secure control over the entire state-space, now the value is created increasingly through a few metropolises, urban hubs and a dispersed network of strategically important production centres, logistical nodal points and cross-border transportation corridors: what takes place in the spaces between them, is of less interest. Consequently, high employment is also no longer considered an end in itself, as from the perspective of international competitiveness, it is more important to attract highly educated, cosmopolitan and agile knowledge workers to strategically important key sectors, than to secure mass employment.

Neoliberal policies and settler endogeneity

Unlike in the areal or decentralized welfare state, today the older, agrarian-based settler communities in the Lapland province do not seem to have a very significant role for the state. In fact, one could argue that Northern Finland’s villages and small residential centres, which are located far from one another, and whose residents are generally not part of the highly skilled, mobile and cosmopolitan workforce valued by the neoliberal competition state, represent precisely the kind of social surplus, whose conditions of existence neoliberal policies have systematically sought to cut down. Over the past decades, the rolling back of regional policy and decreases in government spending have together contributed to a sharp decline in the provision of basic services and opportunities for employment in Lapland and Northern Finland at large. One consequence has been a dual migratory movement from the hinterlands to the region’s larger towns, and further down to Southern Finland.

Does this imply that in its neoliberal form, the settler colonial state no longer has use for those settlers who in the past secured its hold over land and resources? This is what Lorenzo Veracini seems to propose in recent work, which argues that other place-based constituencies than Indigenous peoples are now targets of elimination policies and practices that one would normally associate with settler colonialism.⁵⁹ Although Veracini is careful to stress that the two must not be conflated,⁶⁰ what such endogenous constituencies share with their Indigenous counterparts is their ultimate lack of value from the viewpoint of the accumulation of capital. Consequently, he calls for tentative alliances between Indigenous and non-Indigenous place-based movements and groups. Their fundamental differences notwithstanding, all, according to Veracini, are now threatened by neoliberal, global capitalism rooted in the history of settler colonialism and European imperialism.⁶¹

Especially those communities and families in Northern Finland that are grounded in the history of agrarian settlement, appear precisely as such endogenous communities whose viability is threatened by neoliberal policies associated with the competition state. Although their history positions them antagonistically vis-a-vis the Sámi, today these groups could potentially share many concerns and socio-political objectives in the present. One commonality is the settlers’ closeness to traditional livelihoods and place-based ways of life such as fishing, hunting, berry picking and gathering of wild foods. Moreover, unlike in Sweden and Norway, in Finland settlers have not been excluded from the right to practice reindeer husbandry, and thus reindeer herding is an important livelihood and source of cultural identity also for many Finns. In some areas, this has resulted in bitter land use disputes between Sámi and settler reindeer herders.⁶² Neither, however, is set to benefit from the expansion of extractive industries, or a railway cutting through their pastures.

Settler self-indigenization

In light of all this, one could expect to find in Northern Finland new popular movements that bring local peoples and place-based communities – Sámi and Finnish – together in defence of a clean environment, traditional livelihoods, and better public policies. Presumably, such movements could also together oppose extractive projects such as mines, or the Arctic Railway.

So far, this has not really happened. On the contrary, ethnic relations have turned increasingly tense, propelled by a new conflict over Sámi identity, which is conceptualized here in terms of settler self-Indigenization. Settler self-Indigenization (alternatively, ‘race shifting’ or ‘Indigenous identity appropriation’), refers to a growing tendency among settler people to claim a new identity as ‘Indigenous’, usually relying on the discovery of a distant, possibly Indigenous ancestor or DNA, or building on narratives of family lore.⁶³ Whether the ancestor one claims actually was Indigenous has been shown to be of secondary importance: the main driver behind self-Indigenization is a strong desire to assert Indigeneity.⁶⁴ Since such identity claims tend to lack connection to an existing, living Indigenous community or kin that could claim them back, they tend to conflict with, Indigenous peoples’ own understandings of Indigeneity and Indigenous peoplehood.⁶⁵ Self-Indigenization should therefore not be confused with Indigenous revitalization, which involves efforts by individuals who have been separated from their Indigenous culture, community and kin as a result of colonial policies, to reconnect.⁶⁶ Conversely, as argued by the Canadian sociologist Darryl Leroux, it might in fact tell more about the ‘shifting politics of whiteness, white privilege and white supremacy’ than about Indigeneity.⁶⁷ Especially when promoted through organizations with a clear political agenda, self-Indigenization can also appear as a settler strategy to explicitly challenge and oppose the development of Indigenous rights and self-determination.⁶⁸

Most existing critical studies on self-Indigenization focus on North America, but the phenomenon is transnational and discussed increasingly also in other settler colonial contexts, such as Australia.⁶⁹ In the Nordics, settler self-Indigenization has so far become a source of extensive political controversy and conflict only in Finland, where its roots take back to the mid-1990s, when Sámi cultural autonomy was formally established. At the time, the prospect of a new legislation that would strengthen Sámi rights provoked strong opposition among local Finnish communities, which expressed fears that their own rights and access to land would be negatively affected. Once the laws passed and the Sámi Parliament was established, the same groups begun to search for proof of possible Sámi ancestry, to advance a claim that they, too, were Indigenous, and therefore, entitled to inclusion in the Sámi Parliament’s electoral register. In addition to allowing one to vote and stand as a representative in the Sámi Parliament’s elections, the electoral register became considered as a ticket to possible rights and benefits, should the Sámi Parliament’s mandate one day cover also Indigenous land rights.⁷⁰

The movement emerged first in Enontekiö (Eanodat) where opposition to Sámi cultural autonomy had been strongest. This is no coincidence, for the relationship between Enontekiö’s Finns and Sámi remains particularly tense, owing to the expansion of settler reindeer herding and subsequent conflict over reindeer grazing lands.⁷¹ Over time, the rhetoric and practice of self-Indigenization have expanded to other areas, and today, several overlapping organizations and groupings which promote self-identified ‘Sámi’ or ‘Indigenous’ identities under various titles such as ‘Lapps’, ‘non-status Sámi’, ‘Forest Sámi’ and ‘Forest Lapps’ exist across Northern Finland, both within and outside Sámi homeland region. What all share is their commitment to lobby for their members’ inclusion in the Sámi Parliament’s electoral register.⁷²

Meanwhile, the motivations behind self-Indigenization have potentially multiplied. It is possible, for instance, that for the Finnish reindeer herding communities outside the Sámi homeland region, in places such as Kuusamo, Salla or Ylitornio, a formal ‘status’ as Indigenous seems worth pursuing to more effectively counter competing land use, such as mining and wind parks. Others might act out of a desire to feel more rooted, or for social recognition. Since the 1990s, the Sámi have gained plenty of national and international attention as general interest in Indigenous cultures and peoples has grown. Likewise, a number of Sámi cultural institutions that have been established in Northern Finland along with Sámi cultural autonomy, contribute to their new prominence and visibility. Conversely, Northern Finland’s Finnish communities and their unique (settler) histories and cultural features may have lost in appeal. Especially for the small rural communities and residential centres which today struggle with experiences of neoliberal social and economic abandonment, Indigeneity can seem like a pathway for renewed social recognition and self-esteem.

So far, the Sámi Parliament has withstood pressure to open its electoral register to applicants who rely on archival records of Sámi ancestry going more than three generations back, or on subjective narratives of self-identification. It has pointed out that such evidence does not make one Sámi nor fulfil any of the objective criteria set out in Sámi Parliament Act’s legal definition of a Sámi person, which the Sámi Parliament is obliged to follow.⁷³ No legal definition can do full justice to ethnic identity negotiations that, by definition, are flexible and relational rather than fixed.⁷⁴ However, the Sámi Parliament’s stance on this matter is broadly in line with Sámi customary understanding which stresses the cultural and political rather than racial foundations of Sámi peoplehood.⁷⁵ Moreover, Alakorva, Kylli and Valkonen point out that although the ethnic boundary between the Finns and Sámi has historically been rather clear, it has also been crossable both ways, for instance through marriage, adoption, or as a result of relocation and settlement. All this complicates efforts to ‘read’ Sáminess from the genes or from archival records going back to the 18th or early nineteenth Century.⁷⁶ Thus, from the perspective of the Sámi parliament, the demand to include people, whose claims to Sámi identity rely on distant ancestry, and whom the Sámi consider as Finns, amounts to forced assimilation.

In Finland, persons whose applications for inclusion in the Sámi Parliament’s electoral register are rejected, have a right of appeal to the Supreme Administrative Court (SAC). SAC is a Finnish court which holds the final word in matters relating to the electoral register, yet has no Sámi representation. For the first decade and half, its decisions did not break with those of the Sámi Parliament and its Election Committee, but since 2011, SAC has followed a new interpretation of the legal Sámi definition, which is significantly broader.⁷⁷ As a result, the Finnish court has ordered Sámi Parliament to include in its electoral register a growing number of people whose applications the Sámi Parliament had turned down. In the Sámi Parliament’s view, SAC’s decisions have been arbitrary and constitute a violation of both the legal Sámi definition and of the Sámi right to collective self-determination.⁷⁸ This view is backed by the United Nations’ Human Rights Committee, which has ordered Finland to take steps to remedy the violations.⁷⁹ Since SAC has refused to reverse its decisions, the dispute over the electoral register has now expanded from a local conflict between the Sámi and Finns, to a political and Human Rights dispute between the state and the Sámi.

The state, the Sámi and the settlers

So, how does all this relate to the contemporary aspects of Nordic settler colonialism? The connections between the Arctic Railway, state spatial transformation and settler self-Indigenization may at first seem elusive. Even so, considering them is important, for is it not the case that so far, the conflict over the electoral register has served mainly the interests of transnational capital and globalized, neoliberal settler colonialism? The Arctic Railway’s recent trajectory shows that securing access to land and natural resources in Sápmi is one key challenge that transnational capital and extractive projects currently face within the Nordic Arctic region. Even if Sámi institutions of self-government lack real decision-making powers, today no project that has significant impact on land use within the Sámi homeland region can be advanced, without at least consulting the Sámi Parliament. Failure to respect its views risks a prolonged conflict and damage to international reputation.

Irrespective of what motivates self-Indigenization on an individual level, as a political movement its impact on Sámi rights and capacity to self-govern has proved negative. For instance, Sámi social scientist Inker-Anni Sara argues that the political debate on Sámi identity has hampered the development of Sámi rights and self-determination by diverting attention away from issues and topics that would have been central for the implementation of Sámi human rights.⁸⁰ Such issues include the ratification of the International Labour Organization ILO’s Convention no. 169 (ILO 169), which in the Nordic context is seen as the most relevant for the implementation of Indigenous land rights. Likewise, Sámi cultural historian Veli-Pekka Lehtola recalls that when the laws leading to the establishment of the Sámi Parliament were drafted in Finland in the early 1990s, the general expectation was that Sámi cultural autonomy would later be upgraded with land rights through the ratification of the ILO 169. This has not happened, however, owing largely to organized opposition and outright lobbying by Northern Finland’s Finns, many of whom now claim to be Sámi. Consequently, when a proposal to ratify the ILO 169 was considered by the Finnish Parliament in spring 2015, it was voted down by a significant majority of Finnish MPs. A common justification for the vote was that although Finland is committed to Indigenous rights, the Convention cannot be ratified, because it is not clear enough who is Sámi, and thus, to whom the Convention would apply.⁸¹

In practice, self-Indigenization thus seems to have mobilized a large part of Northern Finland’s non-Sámi population in support of a neoliberal agenda that is characteristic of globalized settler colonialism and that has as one of its main aims to open the Sámi region for extractive exploitation. At times, the connection is not even hidden: the 8-page leaflet or ‘newspaper’ Metsälappalaispäivät [Forest Lapp Days] which was distributed widely across Lapland’s households in spring 2018, is a case in point. Its purpose was to promote a two-day fair that was organized by the ‘Forest Lapp’ association in collaboration with other self-identified ‘Sámi’ groups, to celebrate their identity. In addition to stories and the event programme, the leaflet contained several advertisements, surprisingly many of which were paid for by companies representing the extractive industries. For instance, on page two, the association of Finland’s mining entrepreneurs (Suomen kaivosyrittäjät ry) declared its bold commitment to both ‘promote mining in Finland’ and to ‘support Indigenous peoples and their cultures.’ Another page presented a large advertisement for the multinational mining company Agnico Eagle, and a bit later, another one by Anglo American.

Also Kemijoki Oy, a hydropower company owned largely by the Finnish state, advertised hydropower as ‘part of riverside life’, branding it as a normal, even traditional aspect of life in the Lapland province. This is an interesting statement, given that Kemijoki Oy is responsible for the Lokka and Porttipahta water reservoirs which were constructed near the Sámi village Vuohčču in the 1960s, despite strong local opposition by both Sámi and Finns. The reservoirs resulted in the erasure of several villages, dispersion and drowning of reindeer and their grazing lands and, following all this, a particularly rapid loss of Sámi language and a spiral of assimilation.⁸² More broadly, hydropower construction by Kemijoki Oy and its predecessors is responsible for the extinction of precious river fish from the Kemijoki river, once known as Europe’s best salmon river. The loss of salmon had a devastating, lasting impact on the riverside communities –both Sámi and Finns – for whom it had been vital not only as a means of subsistence, but also as the centre of culture and identity.⁸³

The extractive industries’ role as the Forest Lapp Days’ most visible sponsors does not imply that everyone who identifies with the new self-defined ‘Sámi’ organizations would also support the expansion of extractive industries in their region. In fact, such standing could seem highly contradicting, given that in their self-representations and public testimonies, members of these organizations tend to highlight their deep attachment to traditional, nature-based livelihoods and cultural practices, presumably to argue for their own Indigeneity. What it most certainly does imply, however, is that the mining and hydropower companies consider the self-defined ‘Sámi’ organizations’ actions and political goals to be favourable with their own interests and agenda. This is not surprising, given that a central risk they face in Northern Finland today is the strengthening of Sámi land rights, and a strong Sámi Parliament which has a capacity to slow down, or outright reject, their operations within the Sámi homeland region.

Gradually, settler self-Indigenization has begun to reshape also the Sámi Parliament. Over the past ten years, a so-called ‘opposition bloc’, co-led by a person who entered the Sámi Parliament with a SAC ruling in 2011, has gained strength within the Sámi Parliament.⁸⁴ The bloc is defined especially by its advocacy for a broader Sámi definition, but on a closer look its attitudes toward the extractive industries and projects such as the Arctic Railway also seem more permissive. For instance, an online questionnaire published by YLE Sápmi prior to the Sámi Parliament elections in 2019, reveals that while all other election candidates were strictly against the project, everyone who expressed a favourable or even just ambiguous position towards the Arctic Railway project, also endorsed a broader legal definition of a Sámi person.⁸⁵ When a number of them actually made it through in the elections, Arctic Corridor, the regional lobby office devoted to the railroad from Rovaniemi to Kirkenes, congratulated them on Twitter, rejoicing the fact that ‘[a]ll five candidates with the most moderate views regarding the Arctic Railway’ were now elected members of the Sámi Parliament.⁸⁶

So far, these ‘moderate’ candidates have not gained any critical seats in the Executive Board, and thus the Sámi Parliament’s formal position towards self-Indigenization or extraction-oriented projects such as the Arctic Railway remains unchanged. This may not always be the case, however. In a recent documentary film Eatnameamet – Our Land by Sámi film-maker Suvi West, several Sámi express a concern that Finns are in the process of taking over the Sámi Parliament. As an elder (Nils-Henrik Valkeapää) interviewed for the film puts it:

‘ … [T]he Finnish society does make a great effort to get rid of the Sami people. When its not effective to oppose the Sámi people directly, they start eating us up on the inside. They invade the Sami Parliament and become members, so that the Parliament becomes pointless. That way, they kill the Sami Parliament. And then there’s no-one left to defend the Sami people.’

Conclusions: whose settler colonial state?

From the state’s viewpoint, Finnish settlers in Northern Finland have served various different purposes over the course of history. They have been necessary to secure the state’s foothold in the northern border zone and the Arctic Ocean, and as labour to enable nature resource extraction. Later, settlers were needed to reconstruct Lapland after the Second World War, and to keep the entire state space inhabited, politically stable and Finnish at the face of the Soviet threat. In the context of neoliberal competition state and public policies, however, their role seems less clear. Today, especially the smaller Finnish communities that are scattered across Northern Finland appear increasingly as unproductive residue that the state can no longer afford to sustain.

If this suggests that settlers in Northern Finland might no longer have intrinsic value for the state as settlers, in a new position as self-defined ‘Sámi’ who contest the legitimacy of the Sámi Parliament, they nevertheless seem useful. Its shortcomings notwithstanding, the Sámi Parliament might currently be the only institution in Northern Finland that has the ability to formally withstand and oppose pressure to open the territory for extraction-oriented projects such as the Arctic Railway. By contesting that capacity, by obstructing the development of Sámi rights, and by challenging – with the help of the Supreme Administrative Court - the Sámi Parliament from within, settler self-Indigenization articulates a new way to eliminate the native.

And yet, thinking past the history of settler colonialism, it is not at all self-evident why Northern Finland’s Finnish communities should continue, also today, to position themselves in political opposition to the Sámi and Sámi rights. Insofar as the neoliberal policies of the contemporary competition state can be regarded as averse to both Indigenous and endogenous communities, whose cultural heritage and identity also continues to rely on nature-based livelihoods and access to a clean environment, then at least in regard to the hegemonic struggle against the extractive industries and neoliberal public policies, they could find themselves also on the same side of the hegemonic struggle - as occasional political allies, but with differing ethnic identities. Importantly, the prospect of such alliances cannot depend on the Sámi giving up their right to collective self-determination

Acknowledgements

I am deeply grateful for the two anonymous reviewers for their expertise and immensely helpful comments. In addition, I want to thank a number of colleagues for their excellent comments on earlier drafts, including Àile Aikio, Darryl Leroux and the members of SAMFORSK research group at the Arctic University Museum of Norway, as well as Rauna Kuokkanen for the inspiration and discussions on Nordic settler colonialism. Responsibility for the text is of course mine alone.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie [grant number 845232].

Notes on contributors

Laura Junka-Aikio

Laura Junka-Aikio is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie research fellow at the UiT Arctic University Norway and the leader of the research project ‘New Sámi Renaissance: Nordic colonialism, social change and indigenous cultural policy (NESAR)’ (Research Council of Norway, 2021-2024). Her research interests include the politics of knowledge, contemporary colonialisms, natural resource politics and the politics of settler and indigenous identity. Junka-Aikio is the author of Late Modern Palestine: The Subject and Representation of the Second Intifada (2015, Routledge), and co-editor (with Veli-Pekka Lehtola and Jukka Nyyssönen) of Sámi Research in Transition: Knowledge, Politics and Social Change (forthcoming. Routledge).

Notes

1 See, for instance, Rauna Kuokkanen, ‘Reconciliation as a Threat or Structural Change? The Truth and Reconciliation Process and Settler Colonial Policy Making in Finland’, Human Rights Review, 21(3), 2020, pp 293–312; Rauna Kuokkanen, ‘The Deatnu Agreement: a Contemporary Wall of Settler Colonialism’, Settler Colonial Studies, 10(4), 2020, pp 508–528; Janne Lahti, ‘Settler Colonial Eyes: Finnish Travel Writers and the Colonization of Petsamo’ in Raita Merivirta, Leila Koivunen and Timo Särkkä (eds), Finnish Colonial Encounters, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022, pp 95–120; Anne-Maria Magga, ‘“Ounastunturin terrori” ja uudisasutus Enontekiöllä: Saamelainen poronhoito ja uudisasutus asuttajakolonialismin aikakaudella’, Politiikka, 60(3), 2018, pp 251–259; Åsa Össbo, ‘Från Lappmarksplakat till anläggarsamhällen: Svensk bosättarcolonialism gentemot Sápmi’, Historisk Tidskrift 140(3), 2020, pp 420–443 and Åsa Össbo, ‘Hydropwer Company Sites: a Study of Swedish Settler Colonialism’, Settler Colonial Studies, 10 Febraury 2022 (online).

2 On self-Indigenization, see Darryl Leroux, Distorted Descent: White Claims to Indigenous Identity, Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2019; Stephen Pearson, ‘“The Last Bastion of Colonialism.” Appalachian Settler Colonialism and Self-Indigenization’, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 37(2), 2013, pp 165–183; Circe Sturm, Becoming Indian: The Struggle Over Cherokee Identity in the 21st Century, Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press, 2011.

3 Ethnographic fragments is a notion developed by Anna Tsing to describe her method in Friction: an Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005, pp x–xi, 271–272.

4 Veli-Pekka Lehtola, ‘Sámi Histories, Colonialism, and Finland’, Arctic Anthropology, 52(2), 2015, pp 22–36; Suvi Keskinen, ‘Inter-Nordic Differences, Colonial/Racial Histories and National Narratives: Rewriting Finnish History’, Scandinavian Studies, 91(1–2), 2019, pp 163–181.

5 On the history of Finnish settlement and Finnish-Sámi relations, see, for instance, Saara Alakorva, Ritva Kylli and Jarno Valkonen, ‘From History to Herstory of the Sámi World. Proposing a Feminist Approach to the Settlement History of Finnish Lapland’, in Sanna Valkonen, Àile Aikio, Saara Alakorva and Sigga-Marja Magga (eds) The Sámi World. London: Routledge, 2022; Kaisa Korpijaakko, Saamelaisten oikeusasemasta Ruotsi-Suomessa, Helsinki: Lakimiesliiton kustannus, 1989; Ilmo Massa, Pohjoinen luonnonvalloitus: Suunnistus ympäristöhistoriaan Suomessa ja Lapissa, Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 1994; Tarja Nahkiaisoja, ‘Asutus ja maankäyttö Inarissa ja Utsjoella 1700-luvun puolivälistä vuoteen 1925’, Ministry of Justice Publications 7, Lapinmaan maaoikeudet, Helsinki: Ministry of Justice Finland, 2006.

6 Korpijaakko, Saamelaisten oikeusasemasta Ruotsi-Suomessa, pp 82–84; see also Massa, Pohjoinen luonnonvalloitus.

7 Nahkiaisoja, ‘Asutus ja maankäyttö Inarissa ja Utsjoella’.

8 Nahkiaisoja, ‘Asutus ja maankäyttö Inarissa ja Utsjoella’, pp 110–145.

9 On the history and shifting character of Metsähallitus, see Kaisa Raitio, ‘You can’t Please Everyone’: Conflict Management Ppractices, Frames and Institutions in Finnish State Forests, Joensuun yliopiston yhteiskuntatieteellisiä julkaisuja, 86, Joensuu: University of Joensuu, 2006.

10 In Finland, the Sámi homeland region formally covers the municipalities of Eanodat, Ohcejohka and Anár, as well as the northern part of Soađegilli municipality.

11 Kuokkanen, ‘Reconciliation as a Threat’; Kuokkanen, ‘The Deatnu Agreement’.

12 Kuokkanen ‘Reconciliation as a Threat’, pp 299–300.

13 Kuokkanen, ‘Reconciliation as a Threat’; Kuokkanen, ‘The Deatnu Agreement’.

14 On the promotion of agrarian settlement in Northern Finland, see Massa, Pohjoinen luonnonvalloitus, pp 141–199.

15 On the differences between Sámi and settler relationship to land and natural resource use, see especially Massa, Pohjoinen luonnonvalloitus and Magga,‘“Ounastunturin terrori”’.

16 Patrick Wolfe, ‘Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native’, Journal of Genocide Studies, 8(4), 2006, pp 387–409.

17 Wolfe, ‘Settler Colonialism’.

18 Jane Carey, ‘On Hope and Resignation: Conflicting Visions of Settler Colonial Studies and Its Future as a Field’, Postcolonial Studies, 23(1), 2020, pp 21–42; Jane Carey and Ben Silverstein, ‘Thinking with and Beyond Settler Colonial Studies: New Histories after the Postcolonial’, Postcolonial Studies, 23(1), 2020, pp 1–20; J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, ‘A Structure, Not an Event: Settler Colonialism and Enduring Indigeneity’, Lateral, 5(1), 2016; J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, ‘False Dilemmas and Settler Colonial Studies: Response to Lorenzo Veracini: Is Settler Colonial Studies Even Useful?’, Postcolonial Studies, 24(2), 2021, pp 290–296; Alissa Macoun & Elizabeth Strakosch ‘The Ethical Demands of Settler Colonial Theory’, Settler Colonial Studies, 3(3–4), 2013, pp 426–443.

19 See also Shino Konishi, ‘First Nations Scholars, Settler Colonial Studies, and Indigenous History’, Australian Historical Studies, 50(3), 2019, pp 285–304; Francesca Merlan, ‘A Reply to Patrick Wolfe’, Social Analysis, 41(2), 1997, pp 10–19; Corey Snelgrove, Rita Dhamoon and Jeff Corntassel, ‘Unsettling Settler Colonialism: The Discourse and Politics of Settlers, and Solidarity with Indigenous Nations’, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 3(2), 2014, pp 1–32.

20 Macoun and Strakosch, ‘The Ethical Demands’.

21 Nancy Shoemaker, ‘A Typology of Colonialism’, Perspectives on History, 1 October 2015. Available at: https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/october-2015/a-typology-of-colonialism (accessed 19 May 2022).

22 Shoemaker, ‘A Typology of Colonialism’, paragraph 6.

23 Shoemaker, ‘A Typology of Colonialism’, paragraph 16.

24 Deborah Cowen, ‘Following the Infrastructures of Empire: Notes on Cities, Settler Colonialism and Method’. Urban Geography, 41(4), 2020, pp 469–486, p 3.

25 Cowen, ‘Following the Infrastructures’, pp 5–8, pp 4–5.

26 Ministry of Transport and Communication, ‘Selvitys Jäämeren rautatiestä on valmistunut: Rovaniemen ja Kirkkoniemen välistä yhteyttä selvitetään tarkemmin’, Press release, 9 March 2018. Available at: https://www.lvm.fi/-/selvitys-jaameren-rautatiesta-valmistunut-kirkkoniemen-linjaus-selvitetaan-tarkemmin-968063 (accessed 19 May 2022).

27 Timo-Pekka Heima. ‘Ministeriö: Jäämeren radan selvittäminen jatkuu Kirkkoniemen reitillä: hinta-arvio lähes kolme miljardia euroa’, YLE, 9 March 2018. Available at https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-10109092 (accessed 19 May 2022).

28 Erkki Lilja, Jäämerenkäytävä: Pohjois-Suomen rata- ja tiehankkeiden historiaa, Rovaniemi: Hipputeos, 2013, pp 51–55, p 115. More on the history of the Arctic Railway, see Laura Junka-Aikio, ‘Jäämerenrata, pohjoiset identiteetit ja nykykolonialismi’, in Rinna Kullaa, Janne Lahti and Sami Lakomäki (eds) Kolonialismi Suomen rajaseuduilla, Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 2022, pp 35–58, pp 39–43.

29 Östen Elfving, Petsamon taloudellisesta elämästä ja toimenpiteistä sen kehittämiseksi. Lausunto maatalousministeriölle, Helsinki: Valtioneuvoston kirjapaino, 1924, p 92; Väinö Voionmaa, Suomi Jäämerellä, Helsinki: Edistysseurojen kustannus-osakeyhtiö, 1920.

30 Mikko Uola, Petsamo 1939-1944, Helsinki: Minerva, 2012, pp 348–352.

31 Lilja, Jäämerenkäytävä, p 193.

32 Lilja, Jäämerenkäytävä; For an example of a thorough feasibility study and its outcomes, see especially Hjalmar Castrén, Petsamon radan taloudelliset edellytykset, Helsinki: Valtioneuvoston kirjapaino, 1923.

33 Vesa Väätänen, ‘Securing Anticipatory Geographies: Finland’s Arctic Strategy and the Geopolitics of International Competitiveness’, Geopolitics, 26(2), 2019, pp 615–638.

34 Prime Minister’s Office Finland, ‘Finland’s Strategy for the Arctic Region 2013: Government Resolution on 23 August’, Prime Ministeŕs Office Publications, 16/2013, pp 35–36. See also Finnish Transport Agency, ‘The Transport Needs of the Mining Industry: Working Group Summary’, Projects of the Finnish Transport Agency, 2/2013.

35 See Rauna Kuokkanen, Restructuring Relations: Indigenous self-determination, Governance, and Gender, New York: Oxford University Press, 2019, pp 86–90.

36 Ministry of Transport and Communications, ‘Selvitys Jäämeren rautatiestä’.

37 Sámi Parliament, ‘Jäämeren ratalinjauksesta ei neuvoteltu saamelaiskäräjien kanssa’, Press release, 15 March 2018.

38 Tuija Pallaste, ‘“Mediasta luimme, että tällainen Jäämerenrata on suunnitteilla” sanoo saamelaiskäräjien puheenjohtaja Tiina Sanila-Aikio ja kritisoi Suomea siitä, ettei se vieläkään kuule Suomen pohjoista alkuperäiskansaa’, Helsingin Sanomat, Kuukausiliite, 3 October 2019.

39 Outi Torvinen, ‘Tiina Sanila-Aikio: Jäämerenrata olisi täysi katastrofi saamelaisille’, Lapin Kansa, 9. March 2018.

40 Youth Council of the Sámi Parliament, ‘Saamelaiskäräjien nuorisoneuvoston avoin kirje liikenne- ja viestintäministeriölle kaavaillusta jäämerenradasta’, Open Letter, 13 April 2018. Available at: https://www.samediggi.fi/2018/04/13/nuorisoneuvoston-avoin-kirje-liikenne-ja-viestintaministeriolle-kaavaillusta-jaameren-radasta/ (accessed 19^. May 2022).

41 For media discourses on the Arctic Railway, see for instance Inker-Anni Sara, Torkel Rasmussen and Roy Krøvel, ‘The Role of the Sámi Media in Democratic Processes: The Arctic Railway in Yle Sápmi and NRK Sápmi’, in Sanna Valkonen, Àile Aikio, Saara Alakorva and Sigga-Marja Magga (eds), The Sámi World, London: Routledge, 2022.

42 Ministry of Transport and Communications, ‘Final Report of the Joint Working Group Between Finland and Norway on the Arctic Railway’, Publications of the Ministry of Transport and Communications, 4/2019. Available at: https://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/handle/10024/161367 (accessed 19 May 2022).

43 Ministry of Transport and Communications, ‘Final Report of the Joint Working Group’, p 16.

44 Vesa-Pekka Hiltunen, ‘Vesterbacka: Viiden vuoden kuluttua Rovaniemeltä pääsee Kirkkoniemeen kahdessa tunnissa – “Juna kulkee osan matkaa ilmassa”’, Lapin Kansa, 9 May, 2019.

45 Aletta Lakkala, ‘Saamelaisilta täystyrmäys Vesterbackan Jäämeren ratasuunnitelmille – Saamelaiskäräjät yllätettiin jo toistamiseen’, YLE, 9 May 2019.

46 Finnish Government, ‘Finland’s Strategy for Arctic Policy’, Publications of the Finnish Government, 55, Helsinki: Finnish Government.

47 Juho Kähkönen and Soili Nystém-Haarala, ‘Finland's Plans of the Arctic Ocean Rail Line Are Buried Deep Beneath the Ice - Or Are They Really?’, Current Developments in Arctic Law, 9, 2021, pp 4–6

48 Juho Kähkönen and Soili Nystén-Haarala, ‘Finnish plans for an Arctic railway: Geopolitics are intervening’, Modern Diplomacy, 24 June 2022.

49 Maiju Lassila, ‘Mapping Mineral Resources in a Living Land: Sami Mining Resistance in Ohcejohka, Northern Finland’, Geoforum, 96. 2018, pp 1–9.

50 Youth Council of the Sámi Parliament, ‘Avoin kirje’.

51 See for instance John Agnew and Stuart Crobridge, Mastering Space: Hegemony, Territory and International Political Economy, London: Routledge, 1995; Neil Brenner, New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004; James Ferguson and Akhil Gupta, ‘Spatializing States: Towards an Ethnography of Neoliberal Governmentality’, American Ethnologist, 29(4), 2002, pp 981–1002; Bob Jessop, The Rise of the Capitalist State, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002; Doreen Massey Spatial Divisions of Labour: Social Structures and the Geography of Production, 2nd Ed., Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995; Saskia Sassen, Losing Control? Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization, New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.

52 Sami Moisio and Antti Vasanen, ‘Alueellistuminen valtiomuutoksen tutkimuskohteena’, Tieteessä tapahtuu 3–4, 2008, pp 20–31; see also Laura Leppänen, Changing Statehood: The Spatial Transformation of the Finnish State, University of Turku Publications, 260, Turku: University of Turku 2011; Sami Moisio, ‘Beyond the Domestic–International Divide: State Spatial Transformation as Neo-liberal Geopolitics’, in Pami Aalto, Vilho Harle and Sami Moisio (eds) International Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp 149–177; Sami Moisio and Laura Leppänen, ‘Towards a Nordic Competition State? Politico-Economic Transformation of Statehood in Finland, 1965-2005’, Fennia, 185(2), 2017, pp 63–87; Sami Moisio and Anssi Paasi, ‘From Geopolitical to Geoeconomic? The Changing Political Rationalities of State Space’, Geopolitics, 18(2), 2003, pp 267–283.

53 Moisio and Vasanen, ‘Alueellistuminen valtiomuutoksen’, p 23.

54 Väinö Voionmaa, Suomi Jäämerellä, p 135.

55 Moisio and Vasanen, ‘Alueellistuminen valtiomuutoksen’, pp 23–25.

56 Moisio and Vasanen, ‘Alueellistuminen valtiomuutoksen’, pp 25–26.

57 Moisio and Vasanen, ‘Alueellistuminen valtiomuutoksen’, pp 25–26.

58 Leppänen, Changing Statehood; Moisio and Vasanen, ‘Alueellistuminen valtiomuutoksen’, pp 26–29; Moisio, ‘Beyond the Domestic–International Divide’; Moisio and Paasi, ‘From Geopolitical to Geoeconomic?’; Moisio and Leppänen, ‘Towards a Nordic’.

59 Lorenzo Veracini, ’Containment, Elimination, Endogeneity: Settler Colonialism in the Global Present’, Rethinking Marxism, 31(1), 2019, pp 118–140; Lorenzo Veracini, ‘Endogeneity and Place-Based Identifications in the Age of Precarity and Surveillance Capitalism’, Postcolonial Studies, 23(4), 2020, pp 468–484.

60 Veracini, ‘Endogeneity and Place-Based Identifications’, p 468.

61 Veracini, ‘Endogeneity and Place-Based Identifications’ and ‘Containment, Elimination, Endogeneity’.

62 Magga, ‘“Ounasvaaran terrori”’.

63 For research on settler self-Indigenization in the US and Canadian contexts, see for instance Adam Gaudry, ‘Communing with the Dead: The ‘New Métis,’ Métis Identity Appropriation, and the Displacement of Living Métis Culture’, American Indian Quarterly, 42(2), 2018, pp 162–190; Darryl Leroux, Distorted Descent; Stephen Pearson, ‘The Last Bastion’; Circe Sturm, Becoming Indian; Kim Tallbear, ‘We are Not Your Dead Ancestors: Playing Indian and White Possession’, Unsettle (online), 14 June 2021. Available at: https://kimtallbear.substack.com/p/we-are-not-your-dead-ancestors (accessed 19 May 2022).

64 Darryl Leroux, Distorted Descent, pp 41–102.

65 Chris Andersen, Métis: Race, Recognitions and the Struggle for Indigenous Peoplehood, Vancouver: UBC Press. 2014; Adam Gaudry, ‘Communing with the Dead’; Kim Tallbear, ‘Caretaking Relations, not American Dreaming’, Kalfou, 6(1), 2019, pp 24–41.

66 Joseph M Pierce, ‘Adopted: Trace, Blood and Native Authenticity’, Critical Ethnic Studies, 3(2), 2017, pp 57–76: Darryl Leroux, Distorted Descent, pp 1–4.

67 Leroux, Distorted Descent, p 4.

68 Leroux, Distorted Descent, pp 135–213

69 Cases from Australia were central for instance in the online Roundtable Discussion ’Race-shifting in Settler Nations: Idiosyncratic Individuals, Settler Colonial Appropriation, Identity Fraud’, with Gaynor MacDonald, Victoria Grieve-Williams, Suzanne Ingram, Darryl Leroux, Circe Sturm and Laura Junka-Aikio, organized at the Canadian Anthropology Society’s Annual Conference (CASCA) on 12^. May 2021.

70 Laura Junka-Aikio, ‘Self-Indigenization, Sámi Research and the Political Contexts of Knowledge Production’, in Laura Junka-Aikio, Jukka Nyyssönen and Veli-Pekka Lehtola (eds), Sámi Research in Transition: Knowledge, Politics and Social Change, London: Routledge, 2021 and Leroux, Distorted Descent. See also Laura Junka-Aikio, ‘Toxic Speech, Political Self-Indigenization and the Politics and Ethics of Critique: Notes from Finland’, in Sanna Valkonen, Àile Aikio, Saara Alakorva and Sigga-Marja Magga (eds) The Sámi World, London: Routledge, 2022; Veli-Pekka Lehtola, Saamelaiskiista: sortaako Suomi alkuperäiskansaansa? Helsinki: Into, 2015; Ulf Mörkenstam, Per Selle and Sanna Valkonen, ‘Who are “We the People”? A Comparative Analysis of the Right to Register in the Sámi Electoral Roll in Finland, Norway and Sweden’, in Sanna Valkonen, Àile Aikio, Saara Alakorva and Sigga-Marja Magga (eds), The Sámi World, London: Routledge, 2022; Erkki Pääkkönen, Saamelainen etnisyys ja pohjoinen paikallisuus: saamelaisten etninen mobiliaatio ja paikallisperustainen vastaliike, Rovaniemi: Lapin yliopistokustannus, 2009.

71 Magga, ‘“Ounastunturin terrrori”’.

72 Junka-Aikio, ‘Self-Indigenization, Sámi Research’.

73 Sámi Parliament, Saamelaiskäräjien hallituksen yleisperustelut koskien vaaliluetteloon hakeutumista vuonna 2015. Available at: https://yle.fi/tvuutiset/uutiset/upics/liitetiedostot/SD_stivrra_akkastallamat_2015_.pdf (accessed 5 February 2022).

74 See Ragnhild Nilsson, ‘The Consequences of Swedish National Law on Sámi Self Constitution – The Shift from a Relational Understanding of Who is Sámi Toward a Rights-Based Understanding’, Ethnopolitics, 19(3), 2020, pp 292–310.

75 Saara Alakorva, ‘Miksi pluralistinen jäsenyyden periaate ei sovi saamelaiskäräjille’, Politiikasta.fi, 19 February 2021. Available at: https://politiikasta.fi/miksi-pluralistinen-jasenyyden-periaate-ei-sovellu-saamelaiskarajille/ (accessed 19 May 2022).

76 See Saara Alakorva, Ritva Kylli and Jarno Valkonen. ‘From History to Herstory’.

77 See Ulf Mörkenstam, Per Selle and Sanna Valkonen, ‘Who are “We the People”?’

78 Pirita Näkkäläjärvi, ‘Nearly 100 New People Accepted as Sámi Persons Against Will of Sámi Parliament’, Yle Sápmi, 14 January 2015. Available at: https://yle.fi/sapmi/3-8343268 (accessed 1 February 2022).

79 CCPR/C/124/D/2668/ 2015; see also Sámi Parliament, ‘UN Human Rights Committee: The decisions of the Supreme Administrative Court of Finland on the Electoral Roll of the Sámi Parliament’s Election in 2015 were a Violation of Human Rights’, Press release, 1 February 2019.

80 Inker-Anni Sara, Whose Voice? Understanding Stakeholder Involvement in Law Drafting Affecting Sámi Reindeer Herding, JYU Dissertations 44, Jyväskylä: Jyväskylän yliopisto.

81 Veli-Pekka Lehtola, ‘Saamelaiskiista’, pp 179–215.

82 Tero Mustonen, Kaisu Mustonen, Antti Aikio and Pekka Aikio, Drowning Reindeer, Drowning Homes: Indigenous Sámi and Hydroelectricity Development in Sompio, Finland, Pohjois-Karjala: Snowchange, 2011.

83 Kustaa Vilkuna, Lohi: Kemijoen ja sen lähialueen lohikalastuksen historia, Helsinki: Otava, 1974.

84 Janne Hirvasvuopio, ‘Jussi Halla-Ahokaan ei ole pääministeri: saamelaiskäräjien hallitusvalinnoista, tarkoituksesta ja identiteettikonflikteista’, Uusi Suomi Blogs, 1 March 2020. Available at: https://puheenvuoro.uusisuomi.fi/jannehirvasvuopio/jussi-halla-ahokaan-ei-ole-paaministeri-saamelaiskarajien-hallitusvalinnoista-tarkoituksesta-ja-identiteettikonflikteista/ (accessed 4 November 2020).

85 YLE Sápmi is the Sámi-language branch of Finland’s national broadcasting company YLE.

86 Tweet, 01/10/2019.