Litigating land rights in Sápmi: Indigenous legal mobilization in Finland, Norway and Sweden

In recent decades, Sami groups have been involved in numerous disputes on rights to land and natural resources across Sápmi, the region traditionally inhabited by the Sami people in northern Fennoscandia. For instance, in 2020 Girjas Sami village won the right to administer fishing and hunting rights on its lands in the Swedish Supreme Court. In Norway, reindeer owners challenged a wind turbine park on the Fosen peninsula and the Supreme Court of Norway ruled the license for wind power development invalid last October. In Finland, local Sami fishers have challenged the Tana River fishery agreement between Norway and Finland by demonstratively violating the fishing regulations to provoke prosecution. Moreover, Sami groups have filed several complaints with international law bodies to contest e.g. wind farms, mining or logging that interfere with traditional Sami livelihoods. Thus, while Sami groups pioneered litigation tactics already in the 1960s, a broad set of actors are now turning to legal mobilization to settle conflicts on land and natural resources in Sápmi. Key previous research on Sami political mobilization has documented the systematic historical injustices perpetrated by the states; analyzed repressive state policies towards the Sami; and described evolving ethnopolitical activism. Furthermore, legal research has explored the regulation of Sami land rights from a doctrinal perspective. Another strand of research investigates how extractive industries impact on Sami livelihoods and resistance. Yet we lack knowledge about why Sami groups turn to legal action in their struggles for land and recognition, as well as the wider consequences of their legal mobilization. Why do Sami groups increasingly use litigation tactics to pursue their aims? What determines their success? Why are they litigating in some conflicts but not others? What are the benefits and drawbacks of using litigation strategies to pursue redress of grievances, policy change and societal transformation? And more broadly, how do legal disputes over land rights affect social relations within the Sami communities and the societies in which they live? Taking up this challenge, this paper presents an agenda for socio-legal research on legal mobilization on indigenous land rights in Finland, Norway and Sweden. Using novel empirical data on indigenous land rights litigation in Nordic courts and international human treaty bodies, the paper serves to map out and explain the patterns of legal mobilization on indigenous land rights across the three states. While overall similar in terms of their politico-legal systems, the three states also differ on institutional and structural parameters, such as the demography of the Sami group, international law commitments, indigenous autonomy and consultation orders, land ownership and regulations on reindeer herding. As such institutional frameworks likely set constraints and opportunities for legal mobilization, the paper employs socio-legal mobilization theory to account for patterns of litigation and stake out pathways for future research on legal struggles over indigenous land rights in Sápmi and beyond.