Sami

The Sami are the indigenous people of Sápmi, the region spanning northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia's Kola Peninsula, traditionally associated with semi-nomadic reindeer husbandry, though historically and today only a minority of Sami practice reindeer herding directly, with coastal, forest and river Sami communities pursuing fishing and other livelihoods. Sami communities were subject to extensive, well-documented state assimilation policies (including Norwegianization and Swedification programs and forced boarding-school education) from the nineteenth into the mid-twentieth century, and each of Norway, Sweden and Finland has since established a Sami Parliament with defined, though limited, self-governing authority over cultural and, in Norway and Sweden, certain land-use matters. Sami reindeer-herding rights and land use remain an active and documented subject of legal and political dispute with state and commercial interests, including wind-energy and mining development, in the Nordic countries today.