Environmental Conservation Conflicts in Swedish Sapmi: Sami Ethnoecology and the Struggle for an Indigenous Conservation Paradigm

• Main Author: McFadden, Alexandra
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: English
• Published: Lunds universitet/Institutionen för kulturgeografi och ekonomisk geografi 2022
• Subjects: Environmental conservation; land use; Sami ethnoecology; human ecology; environmentalism; Sweden; Sapmi; Social Sciences; Northern Sweden; sami
• Online Access: http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9079715

Given a backdrop of industrial land use fractures in Northern Sweden, the kind of human-environmental relations cultivated in Sapmi has consequences for Sami indigenous sovereignty and ecological sustainability. Critically investigating different nature relations is of significance to Human Ecology fields in order to deepen knowledge on both unintended and intended consequences of how we understand and engage with environments. Despite mutual alliances between Sami and Swedish-Western environmentalists against extractivist industries, Sami have remained ecologically at odds with environmental narratives that charge them with being ‘un-ecological’, particularly by: ‘overgrazing’ reindeer, herding with modern transport and opposing an increased large carnivore population on their herding pastures. The way that such critiques subvert and challenge Sami ethnoecology has remained largely unexplored. Hence this thesis investigates the struggle for Sami to articulate their own conservation paradigm in conflict and contrast with dominant environmental interests in Swedish Sapmi. Through a thematic analysis of interviews, Sami folklore, quantitative research results and environmentalist content, this research shows how a Sami conservation paradigm is limited in practice by the geographical enclosure of Sapmi, human inclusive and reciprocal and shaped by cultural subsistence practices. Within these three themes I show how environmentalism obscures the regenerative possibilities of Sami herding and subverts Sami ethnoecological relations to their landscape and wildlife. I conclude by highlighting the contributions made to knowledge within Human Ecology fields on the consequences human-nature paradigms have within conservation.