This blog is part of the series “Decolonising Feminism(s)”, hosted by the Gender & International Politics program at Polis180.
A blog post by Rebecca Müller
Why do we, when talking about colonised societies or structural inequality, we do not consider the history of Europe? I mean “we”, as in those most likely to read this article, “we scholars, students, academics”, all of the people that try to be or pride themselves on being sensitive and progressive, on considering other perspectives. “We” read, cite, and amplify perspectives from afar, often with the intention of doing them justice. Yet while doing so, “we” repeatedly fail to recognise the ongoing erasure of voices also within Europe itself, as well as the vibrant feminist movements. “We” often miss the connection. How is it that “we” probably do not even know that “we” have an Indigenous community living in Europe? And that “we” do not know anything about their history and knowledge, let alone their struggles? And what can “we” learn about their understanding of feminism?
I am talking about the Sámi, a Finno-Ugric Indigenous people, who used to make a livelihood mostly as reindeer herders, through fishing and hunting by being reliant on the land. The Sámi faced colonialism repression, dispossession and forced sterilisation whilst living in Europe, across Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula in Russia. Their perspectives on feminism are shaped by the continuous notion that their community is matriarchal. And still, they are offering a different perspective on agency and power than you might envision.
The Sámi will remind us of the significance of not only including marginalised voices but the necessity of a “complete transformation of feminist knowledge production and activism”.
The Role of Women1 in the Sámi Community
Women play a vital role in Sámi society, as caregivers, as those responsible for passing on customs to the next generation and as garment makers. In reindeer herder communities women owned livestock and therefore were economically independent and able to accumulate wealth. The matriarchal power in Sámi societies is also present in other Indigenous cultures. This is through their ability to give life and share knowledge, as it is often reflected in the literature. With modernisation this view on women has changed. The power women had in the Sámi community was threatened when Christianisation forced the notion upon the community that women were subservient to men. Female deities were replaced by a singular male God. Or as Hanrahan et al. described it: “Matriarchal tendencies, where they existed, have been largely lost through colonialism and predatory capitalism, which privileges the white, wealthy and male”. Moreover, with the 1928 reindeer herding act Sámi women lost the right to reindeer herding if they married a man without such a right.
The Construction of Nordic Innocence
Most of us understand Nordic countries to be excluded from the conversation around colonial power relations. We might think of Spain, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, but the role of Nordic countries in colonialism is rarely discussed. Their ties to colonial powers and the colonisation of Sápmi, the region inhabited by the Sámi, is often downplayed. Oppression of the Sámi has a long history and follows the same premises as colonisation elsewhere. The Sámi have been infantilised, inferiorised and portrayed as primitive, starting with the Christianisation of Norway in the 13th century. This article seeks to highlight the ongoing nature of colonisation and the ways in which non-Indigenous privilege continues to dominate and silence Indigenous voices.
What started as forced assimilation turned into segregation and displacement with the goal of erasure. The pattern of oppression continued: During the effort of Nationalisation, the Sámi were prohibited from speaking their language and the USSR followed that path by enforcing “educational programs” for Sámi children. In 1922, the Swedish social-democratic government passed laws with the objective of “racial purity”. That same year saw the founding of the State Institute for Racial Biology in Uppsala. Both instances were later adapted by Nazi Germany with horrific consequences. In Sweden about 63,000 people, mostly women, are said to have been sterilised without their consent in efforts to achieve a “pure society”.
The Sámi, the only recognised Indigenous people in Europe, were facing forced sterilisation and displacement along with the systematic efforts to erase their language, spirituality, and cultural identity.
Women’s Resistance and the Sámi Movement
And yet, activism from Sámi women has a longstanding history. Already in 1910, the Sámi pioneer Elsa Laula Renberg established the Sámi women’s organisation Brurskankens Kvinneforening, which launched the Sámi convention on 6 February 1917. Today, this date is celebrated as the Sámi National Day. Feminist movements within the community gained strength in the 1970s, when women demanded the equality that had been taken from them through modernisation and state policies. The first Sámi women’s organisation was founded in 1988 as part of the Nordic Council’s Women’s Conference, focusing on their unique position within the community. Women’s organisations have been crucial in the Sámi movement to ensure cooperation and organise protests. The Sámi movement as a whole has dealt with issues such as rights to land and water, and educational opportunities. They have fought against Norwegianisation, neo-colonialism and assimilation. Such fights reveal the intrinsic connection between women’s rights and those of Indigenous communities. Formal women’s organisations depend on Sámi survival because gendered rights can only exist within the preservation of indigenous rights. In 1978, Sámi women started to organise transnational women’s seminars, which ignited a protest in 1981. Women in traditional Sámi clothing occupied the Norwegian Prime Minister’s office to demand an end to the Alta project. This event was a uniting effort in formulating an activist Sámi women identity.
Nonetheless, many Sámi women had trouble agreeing with the notion of victimhood, as that would clash with the idea of a “strong” Sámi woman. Moreover, some Sámi women who advocate for women’s rights do not identify as feminists, as feminism is often perceived as embedded within structures of white privilege. Acknowledging this distinction is essential when framing feminist struggles within a colonial context.
A poem by Nina Iversen about the sexual abuse she had experienced changed the trajectory of the perception of gendered violence. It highlighted the hindering effect that discrimination and racism against the Sámi had on the action of the state. Other women followed her example and shared their stories in what would later be known as the Tysfjord case. In the small community of Tysfjord in northern Norway, there have been an estimated 151 cases of sexual abuse over the past six decades. When the Sámi people first moved to Tysfjord only people with Norwegian names were allowed to buy property and only Norwegian speakers could buy the land. This kind of repression is reflected in the fact that these cases went for a long time unseen. Religious aspects and cultural differences increased the complexity of the investigation, highlighting the limited awareness of the historical and cultural diversity within their own country among Norwegian authorities at the time. Many of the victims were not heard or did not trust the authorities, most of them members of the Sámi. Families have asked the government for help earlier but only with the Sámi Parliament receiving greater recognition in international committees, e.g., within the United Nations, action was demanded from Norway, which led to the investigation into these crimes.
Indigenous feminist critique
Women forced a change within the Sámi movement, now giving more space to the struggles of gendered violence. Moreover, Sámi feminist thought adds to broader Indigenous feminist critiques that expose how settler feminisms often erase Indigenous presences and perspectives. Sámi feminism offers an analysis of settler colonialism as a gendered process of Indigenous dispossession. The interplay of gender and violence, economy and religion are made visible through their approaches. The queer movement within the community often faces violence as a minority within a minority, often enforced by Christian ideals. The colonial impact of the repression and hierarchical prevalence of binaries is reflected within queer Sámi discussions and activism.
Dialogue between global Indigenous feminist movements can inform decolonial forms of knowledge-making based on exchange, mutual learning, and coalition-building across differences, which have to be at the heart of research. Knowledge and knowledge production need to be re-thought, disrupted and re-evaluated. And, as most readers of this article will probably be academics, the role of research cannot be ignored. There is a need for the Indigenisation of academia through Indigenous inclusion, reconciliation, and decolonial Indigenisation. After all, research was once mobilised to legitimise colonial domination; today, it can become the instrument for decolonial world-making, reclaimed as a tool for decolonial truth-telling in the act of reimagining the world together. The struggle for Indigeneity, gender justice as well as the dissolution of a heteronormative, patriarchal gender understanding need to be thought together to achieve Indigenisation.
Feminisms centered around Indigenous struggles must be approached through decolonisation and sovereignty, simple inclusion is not enough.
Sámi writers and texts to read:
- Kristi Paltto, as a writer of poetry, novels and radio plays.
- Vigdis Stordahl has discussed women’s situation in relation to the complex modernisation processes in Sápmi.
- Elsa Laula as one of the first to address political issues in her writings (Lif eller Död? Sanningsord i de Lappska förhållandena [Do we face life or death? Words of truth about the Lappish situation]).
- Rauna Kuokkanen a Sámi scholar whose work focuses on Indigenous feminism, Sámi self-determination, colonial power structures in the Nordic countries, and the ways Indigenous knowledge systems challenge Western academic, political, and feminist frameworks.
Comment: As Rauna Kuokkanen has articulated, Nordic feminists often neither resist nor actively engage with Sámi perspectives on feminism. As a white author, it is important for me to acknowledge that my analysis is shaped and limited by my positionality as a white woman. I am no expert in their experiences nor have I had a personal exchange with experts on this topic. Rather than speaking for Sámi women, this article seeks to draw attention to the issue of ignoring knowledge that is both valuable and necessary, and to the ignorance that is a result of such exclusion.
Rebecca Müller is currently studying International Relations in Berlin after having spent time in Madrid and pursuing a bachelors in Public Governance in Germany and the Netherlands as well as an internship in Guatemala, to gain a multifaceted perspective on political struggles. She joined Polis180 in 2025 and has been an active member of the Program “Gender & International Politics”, as well as a contributor to the blog series “Decolonising Feminism(s)”. Her research focuses on gender, social protests, and counter-hegemonic ideas in varied social, economic and political contexts, with a particular interest in Latin America.
- Note on the use of the term women: I am writing women here as the literature does specify the role of women within the social construct of gender as a binary. There is a comment on queerness and the role of colonization but there is too little research on the historical understanding of the Sámi to say something about their understanding of gender as a spectrum. ↩︎
Previously from the blog series “Decolonising Feminism(s)”
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