From Kautokeino to a Nordic Sami Convention: an Overview on Sami and Indigenous Peoples’ Rights
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Università degli Studi di Padova Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Letterari Corso di Laurea Magistrale in Lingue Moderne per la Comunicazione e la Cooperazione Internazionale Classe LM-38 Tesi di Laurea From Kautokeino to a Nordic Sami Convention: An Overview on Sami and Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Relatore Laureando Prof. Giovanni Poggeschi Elena Baggio n° matr. 1109547/ LMLCC Anno Accademico 2016 / 2017 Table of Content Acknowledgments ....................................................................................................... pg. 3 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 5 Part I Chapter 1 ........................................................................................................................... 9 1.1 Clarification on terminological issue ................................................................. 11 1.2 Definition of “indigenous people” and the pursue of self-determination .......... 14 1.3 Polar Law and the right to self-determination for the indigenous communities of the Nordic countries .................................................................. 23 1.4 Institutions and agreements concerning the indigenous matters ....................... 29 1.5 Focus on Linguistic Rights ................................................................................. 31 Chapter 2 ......................................................................................................................... 39 2.1 The sociocultural dimension of Sami people ....................................................... 39 2.2 The political dimension of Sami people ............................................................... 50 2.3 The Scandinavian countries– Relevant social and historical anecdotes ............. 53 Part II Chapter 3 ......................................................................................................................... 59 3.1 The 1957 ILO Convention No. 107 on Indigenous and Tribal Populations ........ 66 3.2 The UN Working Group On Indigenous Populations (WGIP) and the ILO Convention No 169 .............................................................................................. 68 Chapter 4 ......................................................................................................................... 73 4.1 The Nordic Sami Convention ............................................................................... 75 4.2 The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples .......... 82 Part III Chapter 5 89 Chapter 6 – Final Remarks ........................................................................................... 113 Bibliography ................................................................................................................. 119 Website resources ........................................................................................................ 119 2 Acknowledgments First, I would like to thank prof. Poggeschi for accepting to supervise this work and for lending a helping hand during the research phase. His love for the minorities‘ issue and his passion in supporting language rights are commendable, and it has been a true honour to be one of his students. Second, I would like to thank Alexandra Tomaselli of the EURAC Research Centre for always being so kind and willing to help students and researchers interested in the topic, and for helping me in both my bachelor and master thesis. I wish her a successful career and a bright future. Third, I would like to thank the Finnish professors and researchers who I contacted during the research phase, Lotta Kokkonen, Maritta Stoor-Lehtonen, and Lydia Heikkila. Their kindness and passion in helping young people has been highly appreciated. A special thank, in particular, to Lotta: I still remember attending her course in Jyväskylä, during my stay in Finland, as one of the sweetest moments, thanks to her cheerfulness and devotion to the students. Finally, I would like to thank my parents and my closest friends, who have always had kind words of encouragement (and a whole lot of patience) to offer unconditionally through the months spent writing this thesis. III Introduction The protection of the endangered rights of minorities and indigenous peoples around the world. The implementation measures to equally ensure such rights without prevailing on the national domestic law. The evolution of international law and its passing from being a tool of colonialism to a powerful weapon of self-defence for the indigenous communities. The methods for reparation that many international documents advocate for the violations of human rights in detriment of those discriminated fringes of society. All these topics have been abundantly discussed by legal experts and pondered by NGOs, national authorities and governmental bodies throughout centuries, due to their relevance for fundamental human rights. And it was exactly because of the global importance and pertinence of such legal topics in the current events that I decided to make them the centre of my thesis. In the last years, my interest in the indigenous matter has grown considerably, mainly thanks to two factors: the first one is the main subject of my bachelor thesis1, and the second one was the meeting with two experts on the topic who shaped my enthusiasm for the discipline. As for the first reason, I decided to focus on the indigenous matters and on a South American tribe (los machiguengas) in my previous work, but with a cultural and literary twist instead of directing my research towards legal aspects. As I was reading about this endangered population, very similar under many aspects to the Sami people of Scandinavia, the issue of lack of human rights protection and the international businesses meddling with the indigenous traditional life captured my attention to a greater extent than the other legal fields. As for the second reason, I had already attended international law courses during my university years, being drawn more towards global relationships between nation-states rather than domestic and private law, but the course that definitely confirmed my will to investigate more was professor Poggeschi‘s course on comparative international language law. The topic fascinated me since the first lesson, and through the textbook I came across the Sami people‘s case. I had already had the pleasure to share ideas with professor Poggeschi on 1 Baggio, Elena. Dialettalismi machiguenga in El hablador di Vargas Llosa: un esempio di traduzione (cap. III), Università degli Studi di Padova, 2014/15. V the indigenous peoples‘ issue when he kindly suggested some sources that I could check for my bachelor thesis, and attending his course on language rights turned to be (as well as extremely interesting and pleasant) a good base for the specific terminology used in the sources I have chosen for this dissertation. In addition, he introduced me to Alexandra Tomaselli, a researcher on minority rights at the EURAC Centre of Bozen, who was so kind and helpful and in turn put me in contact with other researchers and professors working and studying on this field. However, another fundamental and decisive factor stepped in and contributed to delineating the reasons why I chose the Sami people as the focus of my thesis: my Erasmus stay in Jyväskylä, central Finland. During the five months I have been spending in the Nordic country, I first had the amazing opportunity to visit Lapland and to experiment some of the many activities characterizing the Sami people‘s daily life. In addition, during one of the courses I attended at the Jyväskylän yliopisto (University of Jyväskylä), my class had the most unique of meetings: a Senior Lecturer in Speech Communication of Sami origins, Maritta Stoor-Lehtonen. Instead of coming to lecture us on language and communication, she came on Lotta Kokkonen‘s2 request to show us part of her fascinating exotic (for the present author, at least) culture. She brought with her some colourful traditional Sami clothes, musical instruments and everyday handmade wooden tools (knives, small pouches, books, stationery), but she also delighted us by chanting a traditional yoik3 accompanying herself with a Sami drum. Sometimes, apparently simple contacts with different cultures are enough reasons to be fascinated and make us desire to investigate more on the topic. Maritta Stoor-Lehtonen was also so kind and helpful to later, once back to Italy, suggest some sources I could use to write this dissertation. Out of all the sources I have been reading to better comprehend the indigenous issue, I selected only some of them, in order to be sure to form a solid coherent basis without the risk of inserting too many different voices in the same issue. The authors that most contributed in shaping the guidelines of the final work are Federico Lenzerini, Mauro Mazza, and S. James Anaya. Slimming down the remarkably abundant quantity of 2 Lecturer in Finnish speech communication at Jyväskylän yliopisto, Jyväskylä , Finland. 3 Traditional Sami a cappella chant, often impromptu, whose lyrics express the essence of a person or a place. VI information available on the topic –ranging from social, cultural topics to political, economic and legal aspects- has arguably been the hardest task along the process. Once settled the main concepts, I decided to divide my work into three Parts and 6 Chapters, preceded by an Introduction. Part I offers, in Chapter