FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES Global Development University of Copenhagen Master Thesis Anna Lioba Ganga Ott Enactments of the Arctic Railway A case study of an environmental justice conflict between the Sámi and the Finnish state Supervisor: Stine Krøjer Department of Anthropology ECTS points: 30 ECTS Date of submission: 04/09/2019 Keystrokes: 191’692 Abstract Due to global warming, the Arctic natural resources have become accessible and exploitable. Deter- mined to profit from the Arctic natural resources, the Finnish state has been promoting the construc- tion of the Arctic Railway – a railway between northern Finland and the Arctic Ocean in Norway. The Sámi, who have increasingly found themselves in competition and conflicts over land with other interests, have been opposing Finnish state’s ambition to construct a railway between Rovaniemi in Finland and Kirkenes in Norway, mainly because the railway would cut through and destroy land that the Sámi have traditionally used and occupied. Based upon qualitative fieldwork in Finnish Lapland, including semi-structured interviews and the collection of secondary data, this thesis examines the conflict over the Arctic Railway be- tween the Sámi and the Finnish state. In particular, this thesis aims at understanding how the costs and benefits of infrastructural development as well as the cultural and environmental concerns are enacted by the Finnish state and Sámi representatives in the conflict over the Artic Railway. Adopting a conceptual blend of political ecology and environmental justice perspectives and using the concept of enactment, which describes the process by which a certain reality is constructed, this thesis shows how the Arctic Railway belongs to different, contradictory realities. For the Finnish state, the Arctic Railway is a promise of improvement and progress as well as an opportunity for sustainable development. For the Sámi, the Arctic Railway is however an issue of cultural assimila- tion and environmental injustice as they have enacted the Arctic Railway as a threat to their cultural survival and as an environmentally harmful project that would remove their ability to function fully. This thesis therefore concludes that the conflict over the Arctic Railway between the Sámi and the Finnish state is essentially a struggle over who has the power to make the dominant reality of the Arctic Railway, meaning who has the power to influence decisively how the Arctic Railway is pub- lically perceived. i Acknowledgements I would like to thank all the informants, who kindly participated in the interviews, for sharing their knowledge and opinions on the Arctic Railway and for collaborating towards this thesis. A further thanks to my supervisor Stine Krøjer for the interest shown in my work, for her encouragements and for having provided thorough feedback and helpful material. ii Table of Contents ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................................................... I ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................................... II TABLE OF CONTENTS .............................................................................................................................. III 1 INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 SETTING THE SCENE .................................................................................................................................. 1 1.2 PRESENTATION OF THE FIELD AND THE WHY OF THE STUDY .................................................................... 2 1.3 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ..................................................................................................................... 4 1.3.1 Key terms: indigenous, Sámi, Sápmi ................................................................................................. 7 1.4 METHODOLOGY ........................................................................................................................................ 8 1.4.1 Philosophical underpinning and methodological approach ............................................................. 8 1.4.2 The fieldwork methodology and ethical considerations .................................................................. 10 1.4.3 Coding of the data ........................................................................................................................... 14 1.4.4 Limitations of the study ................................................................................................................... 15 1.5 OUTLINE OF THE THESIS .......................................................................................................................... 15 2 HISTORICAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE SÁMI AND THE FINNISH STATE ................. 17 2.1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................... 17 2.2 SÁMI HISTORY ........................................................................................................................................ 17 2.3 CURRENT SITUATION OF THE SÁMI IN FINLAND ..................................................................................... 19 2.4 PROCESSES .............................................................................................................................................. 21 2.5 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................................... 22 3 THE ARCTIC RAILWAY – THE CONFLICT ....................................................................................... 23 3.1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................... 23 3.2 FRONTIER PROJECT VS. POLITICAL PROJECT ........................................................................................... 24 3.3 DOCUMENT PRACTICES AND ACTS OF DISSENT ...................................................................................... 29 3.3.1 Arctic Ocean Railway Report .......................................................................................................... 29 3.3.2 Final Report of the Joint Working Group Between Finland and Norway on the Arctic Railway .. 32 3.3.3 Regional land-use plan 2040 for Northern Lapland ....................................................................... 34 3.3.4 Conflicting infrastructural realities ................................................................................................ 35 3.4 POSITIONS ............................................................................................................................................... 36 3.5 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................................... 38 4 THE ARCTIC RAILWAY AS A THREAT TO SÁMI’S CULTURAL SURVIVAL .......................... 40 4.1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................... 40 iii 4.2 SETTLER COLONIALISM IN FINLAND ....................................................................................................... 41 4.3 “THIS MEANS THE END OF THE SÁMI PEOPLE” ........................................................................................ 43 4.3.1 Is the Arctic Railway a settler-colonial project? ............................................................................ 47 4.4 “ONE RAILWAY WON’T KILL THE SÁMI” ................................................................................................ 48 4.5 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................................... 50 5 THE ARCTIC RAILWAY – SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE ..................................................................................................................................................... 52 5.1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................... 52 5.2 THE ARCTIC RAILWAY: A SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT PROJECT ........................................................ 53 5.3 THE ARCTIC RAILWAY: AN ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE ...................................................................... 54 5.3.1 The Arctic Railway: The Arctic environment damaging project .................................................... 54 5.3.2 The Arctic Railway: A climate change accelerating project .......................................................... 57 5.3.3 The Arctic Railway: A project destroying Sámi’s basis of life ........................................................ 59 5.3.4 The Arctic Railway: A distributional injustice ............................................................................... 60 5.3.5 The Arctic Railway: A procedural injustice .................................................................................... 61 5.3.6 A language of environmental justice ............................................................................................... 64 5.4 CONCLUSION ..........................................................................................................................................