Indigenous peoples have been regarded as unorganized communities without law, political institutions, or land ownership, and therefore, eligible to be colonized by settler states. In her recently published book Siidan lait, Anne-Maria Magga challenges this view and argues that the Sámi reindeer herders still have functioning laws and legal principles to govern their land use, social organization, and human-reindeer relations. However, industrial land use, the “green” shift, and climate change pose a massive threat for the existence of Sámi reindeer herding in all Nordic states.
In this talk, Magga examines Sámi political and legal thought about political community, human-animal relations, and land ownership, and asks how it challenges the western human-centered political theory which has contributed to biodiversity loss and mass extinction for the last centuries. She argues that Indigenous laws and political thought can offer viable alternatives to state legal systems to govern land use and natural resources on Indigenous lands – and advance Indigenous self-determination in future.
Bio
Anne-Maria Magga (PhD) is a postdoctoral researcher in Sámi and Indigenous studies at the University of Lapland. Her research examines Sámi legal and political thought about human-reindeer relationality and the effects of ongoing Nordic settler colonialism on the Sámi reindeer herding. She works in the research project Sámipolity, funded by the Research Council of Finland (2023–2027). She is the author of Siidan lait. Saamelaiset poronhoidon oikeusperiaatteet ja -teoria (Vastapaino 2024). Anne-Maria is a Sámi reindeer herder from Enontekiö, Sápmi.