Goahti
February 6th
Elsa Laula Renberg - the mother of Sámi cooperation The 1917 meeting was convened by the women's organization Brurskanken samisk kvindeforening, which was chaired by the politically active opinion leader Elsa Laula (1877-1931). Elsa Laula was originally a Sámi from Sweden and was known by the name Laula Renberg after she got married to Tomas Renberg and moved to Norway. The following words from her opening speech at the 1917 meeting show well what the purpose of the meeting was: "We have never realized how important it is for us to work together as one nation. Today, we try, for the first time, to bind...the Sámi to each other." As a result of the meeting, a national Sámi conference with educational questions as the main issue was arranged in Östersund in Sweden as soon as the following year (1918). In Norway, a corresponding national Sámi conference was held in the municipality of Deatnu (Tana in Norwegian) in 1919.
Before 1917, Elsa Laula had contributed actively to the founding of Sámi organizations. She was the chair of the first Sámi association - Wilhelmina-ûsele Sámi Association - which was founded in Sweden in 1904. The association especially worked for solving the conflicts between the reindeer-herding Sámi and the Sámi peasants, and for appointing a committee that would arrange education for the Sámi. As a result of this, special nomad schools were started in Sweden. However, in their teaching, these schools hardly paid any attention to the demands of the Sámi associations.
Elsa Laula contributed greatly to the founding of Sámi associations in Norway, too. There, five associations were started in 1906-08 - all in the South Sámi region, just like in Sweden. In the province of Finnmarken, there was a wave of Sámi associations in the 1910s. In addition to working in the associations, the Norwegian and Swedish Sámi tried to work for their cause with the help of newspapers in the early 1900s. The paper Sagai Muittaleagje ("Breaking the News"), which was founded in Finnmarken in 1904, will be remembered as the paper that helped the first Sámi member of parliament, Isak Saba, to get to the Norwegian Parliament for two sessions (1906-1912).
The Finnish Sámi started their first organization after the Second World War, in 1945, when the association Samii Litto - Saamelaisten yhdistys ("Sámi Association") was founded in Alavieska during the evacuation period. Before that, Finnish friends of the land and the life of the Sámi had started Lapin Sivistysseura - a society for the promotion of Sámi culture - in Helsinki in 1932. In 1934, the society began to give out a magazine called Sabmelaš ("The Sámi") in the Sámi language and contributed - together with the society Samii Litto - to the appointing of the first Sámi Affairs Committee in Finland in 1949. In addition, the achievements of Samii Litto include the founding of a Sámi Christian College in Anár (Inari in Finnish) in 1952 and the opening of the Inari Sámi Museum to visitors in 1962.
The 1917 Trondheim meeting - the beginning of Nordic cooperation 1917 was a restless time in Europe. Nationalism was strong, Europe had drifted into the First World War, Russia was preparing for a revolution, and Finland was getting ready for independence. However, one of the main reasons for arranging the Trondheim meeting was the dissolving of the 100-year-old union between Sweden and Norway in 1905. This split meant that the Sámi of these regions became citizens of two different states. The Norwegian Sámi could no longer benefit from the Swedish nomad schools, and it became more difficult to keep up the tradition of migrating with reindeer across the state borders.
For centuries, reindeer had migrated to the coast and islands of the Arctic Ocean for summer and to the fell and forest areas of Sweden for winter. This annual cycle was now cut by the state border, which led to conflicts about reindeer pastures both between the two states and between Sámi themselves. In 1917, when Finland became independent, the Skolt Sámi - a group of Eastern Sámi - were also split between two states.
The agenda of the Trondheim meeting included three issues that were central in the life of the Sámi: reindeer herding, education, and relations to the dominant population. The first day was dedicated to the issues concerning reindeer herding. The delegates discussed the reindeer-herding agreement between the states of Norway and Sweden - an agreement of significance even today. The second day was completely reserved for going through "the Law on Lapps" - the predecessor of the present Sámi Acts. Here, the most important issues concerned the internal relations of the Sámi and their relations to the peasants, the majority of whom were Swedes and Norwegians.
On the third day, the meeting discussed questions dealing with social and educational conditions and brought up the ends and means of Sámi organization. Thus, the same central questions that Sámi administration and politicians work on even today were raised already in the Trondheim meeting.
The 1917 meeting issued a joint communiqué and appointed a committee to prepare a proposition for solving the question of reindeer pastures. However, the most important thing was that the Sámi had come together to take a common stand - a fact which was noted on a national level on both sides of the border.
The Trondheim meeting did not, however, mean that Sámi cooperation over the state borders would have got under way on a regular basis. It was not until 1956 - when there were Sámi organizations in Finland, too - that the II Sámi Conference was held and the Nordic Sámi Council founded in Kárašjohka (Karasjok) in Norway. The Sámi from the Kola Peninsula officially joined this cooperation in the XV Sámi Conference which was arranged in Helsinki in 1992. This was also the Conference that chose February 6th the National Day of the Sámi.
The 80th anniversary of pan-Sámi cooperation was celebrated in Trondheim on February 6, 1997. The festivities were arranged in the Methodist church where the 1917 meeting had also been held. On the same occasion, the Sámi agreed on starting a new forum of cooperation between the Nordic Sámi Parliaments which are elected through elections. The Kola Sámi joined this new Sámi Parliamentary Council as observers, as they do not yet have their own representative body.
To close the 1917 Trondheim meeting, the delegates sang the national anthems of the different states. Today, the Sámi have their own national song, Sámi soga lávlla, or the Song of the Sámi Family, the lyrics of which have been written by the first Sámi member of parliament, Isak Saba (Sápp-Issát). February 6th is also one of the official flag-flying days of the Sámi. All the important symbols of the Sámi nation - the national day and song and the flag - have been adopted by the Sámi Conference.
Source courtesy of: samediggi.fi/vanha/oktavuohta/en/kaindex5.htm
