Indigenous villages sue Sweden over hunting, fishing rights

(CN) — The Indigenous Sami village of Ran, located in the Västerbotten region in northeastern Sweden, will be the first of four such villages to sue Sweden in an effort to obtain exclusive hunting and fishing rights in its territory, the National Confederation of Swedish Sami stated in a news release on Tuesday.

The Swedish Sami villages of Sirges, Unna Tjerusj and Báste will soon follow. The lawsuit comes four years after Sweden’s Supreme Court made a landmark decision affirming the exclusive rights of Girja village to issue hunting and fishing licenses within its district. The ruling created a carve-out for the Sami village, exempting it from rules under the Swedish Reindeer Husbandry Act.

Girja, located in the Norrbotten region around 200 kilometers (124 miles) from Norway’s border, won the lawsuit in 2020 after a 10-year court battle with the Swedish government.

In 2021, the government appointed a committee tasked with updating the Swedish Reindeer Husbandry Act to create new regulations for the Sami, an Indigenous group that lives in the northern reaches of Scandinavia. The committee’s interim report concluded in 2023 that all Sami villages in Lapland have exclusive rights to hunting and fishing in the region based on historical claims.

Years later, though, some Sami say they’re still waiting for Sweden to implement those promised reforms.

“The hope that the Girjas judgment would lead to new legislation for other Sami villages has so far been dashed, and the patience to wait has run out," lawyer Peter Danowsky said in a press conference on Tuesday alongside the Swedish Sami National Confederation and the villages. Tired of waiting and hoping to assert their hunting and fishing rights, “these four Sami villages also have to go to court.”

Lapland is the Swedish section of Sápmi, the traditional home of the Sami that spans across northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia.

Many Sami there live off reindeer husbandry — but these traditions are being disturbed by outside hunters, commercial mining and urban development, according to Swedish Sami representatives wishing for more self-determination.

“Our view has always been that the state has never had its own hunting and fishing rights, but that it is the right of the Sami people that has been handled by the county board,” representatives from the four suing villages wrote in an open letter published by Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter on Tuesday.

“In a modern state governed by the rule of law like Sweden, it should be self-evident that the person who owns a right should also be able to dispose of and decide on it," the open letter continued. The idea that Sami “are not capable of handling our own rights … belongs in the history books.”

The Girja case verdict has caused friction between the Indigenous Sami and other Swedes. Sami communities have received threats and attacks on reindeer, with some reindeer mutilated and left for dead, Swedish outlet the Local reported in 2020.

“We know that racism and threats have increased on social media, and now you also see killed reindeer," Åsa Larsson Blind, then chairman of the National Confederation of Swedish Sami, told Swedish public broadcaster SVT. “I see a clear connection to the Girjas verdict.”

Digging into the data in 2023, SVT showed that since the Girja verdict, the amount of allowed hunting days had decreased by 63% within Girja area. That has sparked worries from the Swedish Hunter’s Association.

“We think it is a sign that there will be less hunting if the Sami villages get to decide,” said Anders Lacobæus, a representative from the association.

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