“Indigenous and northern perspectives on impact assessment”

Speech by Aili Keskitalo, President of the Sámi Parliament of Norway

IAIA 06 – International Association of Impact Assessment.

Stavanger, Norway - Power, Poverty and Sustainability

The Role of Impact Assessment, 23-26 May 2006.

Thank Mr Chair.

Ladies and gentlemen’s!

It is indeed a great honour for the Sami Parliament to be invited to contribute to this important conference, and I would like to express my gratitude to the president of the IAIA, Mr William Veerkamp, as well as to the host of this Annual Meeting, the Royal Norwegian Ministry of the Environment for their kind invitation.

The Sami people are an indigenous nation spread across four countries. We are one people, united through culture, language and history, and living in areas which we alone inhabited and utilised from time immemorial and up until written history began to be recorded.

For the Sami, as for most indigenous peoples, the Central Government authorities have been both guardian and benefactor. The State has become a guardian by disparaging and overriding, and a benefactor by creating dependence and defining opportunities. International regulation of states' treatment of and interaction with indigenous peoples has therefore been of the utmost importance for the indigenous peoples of the world. This is the case when it comes to being accepted as indigenous peoples and with regard to states making policies that respect indigenous people's special position and interests as nations.

As a minority, the Sami are subject to the legislation and values advocated by the majority population at any given time. The Sami Parliament has managed Sami cultural artefacts in compliance with the Cultural Heritage Act since 1994. Sami sites and monuments are vital documentation of Sami history and prehistory. The cultural artefacts bear witness to the Sami understanding of the terrain and nature, and to the impact of the terrain and nature on economic, social and religious conditions. Thus in contemporary Sami life, cultural artefacts help give us a sense of cultural belonging and awareness of our behaviour in and use of nature. Given the Sami Parliament's responsibility for Sami cultural artefacts, we have the right to veto plans and initiatives that could be detrimental to those cultural artefacts. In other fields and sectors, however, the Sami Parliament merely has the right to voice an opinion about plans for land use.

Our experience with impact assessments is multi-faceted. We definitely agree that impact assessments are a crucial tool for weighing different interests against each other. And the goal of impact assessment appears to merit respect. However, the Sami Parliament has frequently observed a lack of knowledge about Sami social conditions and Sami interests on the part of the responsible authorities, the sectoral authorities, planning consultants and those who propose ideas. We have also registered a certain a lack of willingness on their part to accept that the Sami also have collective social interests in certain areas. In other words, even though the intentions underlying impact assessments are good, the actual implementation of the provisions does not always actually ensure that consideration for Sami culture is taken seriously.

The indigenous peoples of the world are characterised by their historical relationship to the lands they inhabit, by the prudent use and husbandry of local natural resources since long before national borders were established, and by their languages, cultures, traditional knowledge and practices. In other words, they constitute separate communities. Traditional knowledge refers to knowledge and skills developed outside formal education systems, and it is widely identified with indigenous peoples. Traditional knowledge is dynamic; It is passed down orally from generation to generation, and it has enabled communities to survive.

We observes that traditional knowledge has often been neglected and ignored in connection with plans and initiatives. Accordingly, it is of the utmost importance that the local Indigenous communities involved and the Indigenous population at large be given an opportunity to contribute at the earliest possible stage to the preparations for plans and studies and to the preparations for initiatives based on sectoral legislation. In other words, there is a lack of knowledge about what constitutes important social considerations and interests from the indigenous peoples point of view. It is very important that the indigenous peoples and authorities be given opportunities and resources to acquire this knowledge. Keywords here include capacity building and skills upgrading.

In the opinion of the Sami Parliament, it is important to:

1. Build up the general population's ability to:

• participate in political activities and contribute to increased social responsibility and commitment;
• face the challenges presented by increasing pressure on traditional industries, culture and the community.

2. Develop sustainable institutions to preserve and develop indigenous people's collective memory and traditional knowledge.

3. Raise the level of knowledge among the general public so indigenous people's are able to participate in modern social development without losing the strong foundation provided by our traditions and culture.

The High North has tremendous natural resources, renewable and non-renewable alike. The abundant natural resources in the High North present challenges in terms of security policy, economics and the environment. None of these challenges can be addressed without the indigenous perspective playing a central and natural place in analyses and in the formulation of objectives and initiatives in a policy for the High North. As regards the integration of the indigenous perspective, key phrases include the recognition of rights to land and resources, self- and co-determination in decisions, capacity and human resource development, and cooperation between states and indigenous nations. The recognition of indigenous nations' right to self-determination forms an important platform for collaboration and finding solutions by working together with central government authorities and others. In this way, indigenous nations will be able to play an active part in governance, so that we can take more responsibility for our own future.

A great deal of a nation's identity and cultural self-image is invested in how its people make use of and relate to nature and natural resources. Many of the people of central and southern Europe have long traditions of looking at nations of hunters and fishers as primitive, uncivilised and inferior. It was not until in the spring of 2005 that Norway recognised that the Sami also have rights to land and rights of use in Finnmark County. Finland and Sweden have yet to recognise such land rights. Canada and Denmark, on the other hand, have come far in the practical recognition of indigenous peoples' land rights.

The Finnmark Act established a new autonomous organisation for the administration of land, water and resources in Finnmark called the Finnmark Estate. About 95 per cent of Finnmark, i.e. an area the size of Denmark, is being transferred from the state to this autonomous organisation on 1 July this year.

Pursuant to §4 of the Finnmark Act, the Sami Parliament can issue guidelines on how the state, county and municipal authorities should assess the impact of changing the use of uncultivated areas on Sami culture, reindeer husbandry, rough pasturing, livelihoods and the community. The Sami Parliament is currently working on these guidelines. In a way, these guidelines might be viewed as a recipe for how impact assessments should be conducted in Sami territories. The work attaches importance to the guidelines also helping to ensure sustainable development for Sami culture, traditional industries and rough pasturing and the community, as well as to help strengthen Sami participation in decisions that involve land and natural resources in Finnmark County.

The Sami Parliament sees the indigenous people's traditional knowledge and respect for this knowledge as an obvious prerequisite for sustainable development. Such knowledge must therefore be taken into account in decisions. At the international level, there are several examples to indicate that the more indigenous peoples participate in processes relating to land use, the fewer conflicts arise in the meeting between indigenous peoples and the needs of the majority society.

I know that many of you have journeyed far to come here to Stavanger. This conference has attracted participants from every part of the world, and many of you are no doubt beginning to long for home. There is an old Norwegian proverb that translates very roughly as "Away is good, but home is better". It is pretty much the equivalent of the English proverb: ”There's no place like home”, and I'm sure many of you would agree with that. From time immemorial, however, the Sami culture has had another proverb which means more or less the opposite. The Sami proverb says: “Joði lea buorret go oru”, which means that it is better to be on your way than to stay in one place. This proverb demonstrates the vast difference in the values that separate a nomadic culture from a more stationary agrarian culture. I will illustrate this with a poem that exemplifies the Sami proverb I mentioned.

Indigenous people's way of life and their strong cultural ties to nature make them particularly vulnerable to pollution and other conditions that impact the balance between people, flora, fauna and the land. One person who was especially concerned about maintaining this delicate equilibrium was the multi-talented Sami artist, Nils-Aslak Valkeapää. It seems somehow appropriate to conclude with one of his poems.

In 1991,Valkeapää became the first Sami writer to win the prestigious Nordic Prize for Literature. Valkeapää did not write about nature, he wrote nature. His writing embodied so much of life as it truly is lived on the tundra, that his poetry and nature are one. There is an immediacy in his style of writing; its language and experiential quality make us active participants in the Arctic process.

The following verses are excerpted from Nils-Aslak Valkeapää’s poetic work Ruktu váimmus, published in English under the title: Trekways of the Wind:

My home is in my heart
it migrates with me

You know it brother
you understand sister
but what do I say to strangers
who spread out everywhere
how shall I answer their questions
that come from a different world

How can I explain
that I can not live in just one place
and still live
when I live
among all these tundras
You are standing in my bed
my privy is behind the bushes
the sun is my lamp
the lake my wash bowl
I say nothing
I only show them the tundra

I see our fjelds
the places we live

All of this is my home
These fjords rivers lakes
the cold the sunlight the storms
The night and day of the fjelds
happiness and sorrow
sisters and brothers
All of this is my home
And I carry it in my heart
Thank you for your attention.

(Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, From Ruoktu vaimmus, 1985, Trekways of the Wind, 1994
Translated by Ralph Salisbury, Lars Nordstöm, and Harald Gaski)