The Sámi people are a Finno-Ugric ethnic group, related to the Finns, Estonians and (more distantly) Hungarians. They originated in the Volga region of Russia, where the ancestors of the Sámi migrated using the ancient river routes to Finnish Lakeland, and arrived in their current homeland sometime after the beginning of the Common Era. Their language developed in the southern side of lakes Onega and Ladoga, and spread further from there. Culturally, they are similar to other Arctic peoples like the Inuit, Aleuts, Yakuts, Chukchi, Evens and Yukaghirs, with semi-nomadic reindeer herding being their best known profession, and they practice their own brand of shamanism alongside Christianity. Their handicraft, Duodji, is a notable feature of their culture, as well as their joik musical tradition, which are song-chants that are traditionally sung A Cappella, usually sung slowly and deep in the throat with apparent emotional content of sorrow or anger. They also traditionally divide the year into eight seasons instead of the typical four.
The Sámi have faced discrimination by other Europeans, who have regarded them as a "backward" and "primitive" people in need of being "civilized", and the Swedes and Norwegians have targeted them with policies of forced assimilation, with the Sámi still coping with the cultural consequences of language and culture loss due to these policies and generations of Sámi children taken to missionary and/or state-run boarding schools. The policies of the Norwegians in particular caused the dislocation of Sámi people to Sweden in the 1920s, which increased the gap between local Sámi groups, and the scorched earth policy conducted by the German army in World War II caused heavy destruction for them in Norway and Finland as all existing houses and visible traces of Sámi culture were destroyed. Their homeland is also rich in natural resources, which has caused controversy and protests against companies who wish to exploit these resources and threaten the traditional Sámi livelihood, with the controversy over the construction of the hydro-electric power station in Alta in 1979 bringing Sámi rights onto the political agenda. The Sámi anthem and national flag were created in August 1986, and in 1989, the first Sámi parliament in Norway was elected. The Sametingslag (Swedish Sámi Parliament) was established in January 1st, 1993, and in 1998, Sweden formally apologized for the wrongs committed against the Sámi. In 2005, the Finnmark Act was passed in the Norwegian parliament giving the Sámi parliament and the Finnmark Provincial council a joint responsibility of administering the land areas previously considered state property. These areas (96% of the provincial area), which have always been used primarily by the Sámi, now belong officially to the people of the province, whether Sámi or Norwegian, and not to the Norwegian state. In 2007, Janne Seurujärvi was the first Sámi ever to be elected to the Finnish Parliament.
The Sámi flag
