On September 30, the Truth Commission for the Sami people submits its final report to the government. According to the directives, the assignment is to map and review the state's policy towards the Sami through history and its consequences for the Sami people. Politics must be given a "comprehensive" light but at the same time focus on the state's "abuse" and "historical injustices".
An important part of the basis is the scientific 1,100-page anthology, a partial report that the commission handed over to the government in March 2026. The anthology's 36 chapters, written by 59 authors, have been peer-reviewed, which is declared to be a "guarantor that the chapters are scientifically reliable".
There are chapters worth reading in the anthology, but as a whole it represents a failure as it is not about the Sámi but about the reindeer-herding Sámi. About two-thirds of the chapters concern this category. We are told almost nothing about the thousands of Sámi, the majority of the Sámi collective in the last 150 years, who have been wage workers, farmers and entrepreneurs, other than that most are assumed to have been forcibly Swedishized. In the anthology, the state is declared to have "made invisible" the Sami, the same can be said about the commission's treatment of non-reindeer-herding Sami.
These powerful words and theoretical debauchery rhyme badly with studies that have shown that the Sami's health and well-being are good and similar to those of other Swedes
This confusion also characterizes the use of language. The term "the Sami society" is used upwards of 50 times without being defined, but the context shows that it usually refers to the reindeer husbandry, its communities and institutions. The same applies to "Sámi values", "Sámi fundamentals" and "the Sámi use of land and water". It is part of the knowledge area's reindeer husbandry-based ethno-nationalist discourse.
The majority of the chapters do not live up to scientific quality requirements. It is lacking in the most basic, such as that concepts must be defined and factual information must be correct. In one chapter it is claimed, for example, that up until the 1850s the Sami were "in the majority in northern Sweden". If it had been correct, there would have been around 120,000 Sami people there. They were considerably fewer, an estimated 4,000–5,000. And it was not "Sámi representatives" who sued the state in 1966 in what would become the Skattefjällsmålet, but five Sámi villages.
The research methods and language use also raise questions. A co-authored chapter is based on "Sámi counter-narrative":
"When Anna [one of the authors] introduces herself, she says 'I am Anna and I am knowledge', something that has been created through life and in the conversations with those who have gone before." The authors also believe that "the Sami people are exposed to violence on a daily basis". Others write about "psychological violence" and "eradication of indigenous people", including the Sami. These powerful words and theoretical debauchery rhyme badly with studies that have shown that the Sami's health and well-being is good and similar to that of other Swedes.
A more pervasive problem is the anthology's historical interpretive framework. In many chapters there is an anachronistic theorizing about the colonial state. The disrespect started early, as it is written in one chapter: "already the peace of Nöteborg at the mouth of the Ladoga in 1323 divided Sápmi into spheres of interest without regard for Sami land and rights". In another, it is described how a researcher and a French aristocrat during the 17th century - in line with the policy of the state church - took the right to "handle, study and define [the Sami] drums in a place and in a cultural context far from their origin", according to the author, an example of "colonial violence". It was of course the case that resource-poor people in Sweden before the 20th century – the majority of the population – were generally not afforded any responsive consideration from the authorities.
In the anthology, a narrow, idealistic understanding of state politics is given. The policy since the 16th century seems to have been carried out without regard to the state feudalism and later the capitalist mode of production which strongly influenced actors' room for action. The same applies to concepts such as "industrialization" and "modernization" which imply compelling social systems and transformation processes. The shortcomings lead to superficial analyzes of Sami land losses during the 18th and 19th centuries.
The same problem can be found in the treatment of Swedishization and assimilation. In the anthology, it is written about a "forced assimilation policy" and about legislation "with the aim of completely assimilating resident Sámi with the Swedish population". It is unclear what is meant as there was no stated government policy of Swedishization towards the Sami. The state's language and education policy aimed at the Sami was inadequate and by the standards of our time inhumane, but it was not aimed primarily at assimilating the Sami but at supporting reindeer husbandry.
The Truth Commission's anthology represents a double failure
In my opinion, the state's policy towards the Sami in the early 20th century was not fundamentally racist. The racist ideas about the Sámi of the time did not trump the democratic idea of citizenship. In the Sweden that was built, an ethnic category such as the Sami - a tribe or race in the language of the time - would not, for example, have the exclusive right to residence in Lapland west of the cultivation border or special seats in the Riksdag; demands that the Sami leader Elsa Laula put forward.
The Truth Commission anthology represents a double failure; it is not about the heterogeneous Sami folk collective and it is scientifically inferior. It also illustrates an area of knowledge with its own – and deviating from other areas of knowledge – standards for what counts as good research. A final report based on such knowledge production runs the risk of being wrong in its conclusions and recommendations.
Read more articles from DN Debatt:
The truth commission for the Sami people: "The history of the Sami is also the history of Sweden"
