This site is a project created as a part of Lafayette College’s Digital Humanities Summer Scholars Program 2017. Over the past few hundred years, the Sami indigenous population of Sweden has been affected by Swedish policies restricting reindeer herding, defining their indigeneity (and therefore access to indigenous rights), and categorization and manipulation of their community. While Swedish policies attempted to balance farming and reindeer husbandry (Lantto 2014), preserve Sami culture by limiting modernization and/or assimilating those who were not a part of the determined “Ideal” Sami identity (Lantto & Mörkenstam 2008), and strive to remove racism by eliminating discussion of ethnic groups in data collection (Axelsson 2011), the result has been a lack of understanding of Sami culture. This lack of understanding increases struggles for land, stereotyping of Sami youth and Sami living outside of larger Sami communities, and has received criticism from the United Nations on numerous occasions. The Swedish state has tremendous power and influence over the outcome of Sami wellbeing. Definitions of Sami indigeneity in the history of Swedish legislation have created limited and restricted perceptions of the Sami as a people. These limitations create issues of stereotyping, cultural marginalization, and a removal of voice in environmental and land decisions, therefore, challenging Sami wellbeing.
 

 A Sami is a person who perceives him-or herself to be Sami, and he or she, parents or grandparents have, or have had, the Sami language in the home. (The Sami Parliament Act (SFS 1992:1433)

It is important to understand how Sami definitions differ from those implemented and described by the state. In addition, these contrasts are an example of how indigenous narratives are decreased and minimized. Finally, there is a lack of demographic data on Sami people in Sweden, which greatly challenges the community’s ability to express its concerns and develop a significant voice in political discourse.  Furthermore, a lack of data challenges researchers and outsiders in terms of learning about Sami culture and the Sami population, leading to a lack of understanding of issues the community faces and a lack of initiative to address indigenous rights issues and indigenous wellbeing in Sweden. Through a series of three timelines, I show the process of categorization and therefore exclusion of Sami identities, as well as definitions of indigeneity and how they lead to issues for the community and perceptions of inferiority and even fantasizing and commodifying their culture(s). It is important to note that this is not one singular instance of indigenous marginalization through the manipulation of indigenous identity. This is a global issue.

This project has been created with the information available, but emphasizes the absence of information as well. The absence of data regarding Sami demographics not only poses a problem in terms of addressing Sami indigenous rights and opportunities to continue research on these issues, but also represents the ways in which the Sami community are marginalized despite Sweden's message insisting that they are equal (Axelsson 2011).