Berliner Tageszeitung - Truth commission demands compensation for Sweden's Sami people

The Truth Commission for the Sami People presented 71 proposals to the government, authorities, museums and Church of Sweden "to acknowledge and take responsibility, compensate for the human rights of the Sami people and find a way forward based on equality and respect" for those rights.

"Discrimination against Sami, racism, hatred and threats must cease," the commission said in a statement hours before it presented its final report to the government.

There are an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 Sami people across the vast Arctic wilderness of northern Finland, Norway, Sweden and Russia's Kola peninsula.

They have lived by hunting, fishing and reindeer herding for thousands of years, and been subjected to colonisation for centuries.

Sweden's truth commission, set up in 2021, was tasked with charting and investigating the policies affecting the Sami and their implementation.

- Children taken away -

The commission presented its final report to the government at a ceremony in the city of Ostersund, known as Staare in the Southern Sami language.

"The Commission's report shows that, for a long time, the state and the church controlled who was considered Sami and the conditions of Sami life," the head of the commission Lena Nyberg said.

Among other abuses, Nyberg said that "children were forced away from their families to be raised in nomad schools, work homes and boarding schools, in order to be segregated or assimilated."

"This has of course affected the entire lives of these children, their children's lives, and their grandchildren's lives," Nyberg said.

She also said the state still to this day was "violating the human rights of the Sami".

"The state must acknowledge and offer compensation for this, and create the conditions needed to heal wounds and be able to move forward," Nyberg said.

Reindeer herding has been a bone of contention for years, with the Sami insisting their land rights in vast swathes of the north are at threat from industry, including mining, forestry, wind and hydro power required for the green transition.

In 2021, the Lutheran Church of Sweden apologised for centuries of "severe violations of human dignity" against the Sami people.

- Forced Christian conversion -

A central part of the commission's work has been to gather testimony from Sami people about their experiences, collating some 300 interviews and written accounts.

The persecution of the Sami, Europe's only indigenous people, goes back to the 17th century, when the state began colonising and exploiting their resource-rich lands.

They were first brutally forced to adopt Christianity and abandon their shamanism, before assimilation efforts intensified in the 19th and 20th centuries as the far north's economic importance grew.

In June 2023, a commission set up by Norway's parliament delivered a damning report on historical injustices against and attempts to assimilate indigenous Sami, Kvens and other ethnic Finnish people, and in November 2024, Norway's parliament formally apologised to the minorities.

In December 2025, a Finnish truth and reconciliation commission called on Finland to rectify injustices committed against the Sami.

D. Fjodorow--BTZ