Summary: | In the summer of 2013 a conflict between a mining company and a group of protesters took place in Gállok (Kallak) in northern Sweden. The conflict brought a long-standing debate to the surface about the so-called Swedish mining boom and its impact on both natural environments and the traditional Sami livelihood, reindeer herding. This article explores the power relations and structural and cultural violence experienced by members of a sameby (a Sami reindeer herding community) in its relations with the Swedish government-owned mining company LKAB. The study centres around the events that took place before and during the creation of an opinion piece, published in a Swedish national tabloid, involving both parties. The analysis uses two of the sameby members’ narratives to describe their experiences in order to investigate the power relations, which are then analysed using peace researcher Johan Galtung’s theories on structural and cultural violence.
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