"We are no longer prepared to be silent” The making of Sámi indigenous identity in an international context

In May 2008 at the annual session of the Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues in New York indigenous people celebrated the adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by the UN General Assembly in 2007. For decades the indigenous movement had striven to create an alternative vision of democracy and development.The approval of the declaration was considered a historic victory for indigenous peoples everywhere as the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples promoted their rights on a global level. It was seen as an important symbol of the beginning of the end of invisibility, marginalization and oppression. This includes the opportunity to govern their environment and development on its own terms and to discuss legal, administrative, and other arrangements that affect and are related to their lives with the governments of the countries they live in. In the growing interchange between indigenous representatives and international bodies and institutions in the UN and elsewhere, there has been a two-way process: indigenous people have begun to go out into the world as the outside world has started to come to them. Global organizations of indigenous peoples have succeeded in developing a concept, ‘indigenous peoples’ closely related with the concepts of culture, human rights and self-determination. This article also discusses some of dimensions of Sámi nation- and identity-building resulting from the ongoing processes of international indigenisation. The Sámi themselves have been central actors in the international movement since the 1970's when the first international organization, the World Council of Indigenous Peoples was founded. The rise of ethnicity in the movement of indigenous peoples is also a direct indication of the dynamics and renewal power of indigenous peoples. Not only has the indigenous movement been a political mobilization, it has also been a movement of transformation and renewal. Activism has led the revitalization of indigenous cultures, languages, traditions and rights. This development also caused the rise of indigenous studies and a shift in the paradigm towards a perspective of decolonialism, postcolonialism, and equality, which arises from the indigenous cultural heritage and an epistemological way of thinking.