Gijtto, ja bures, ráhkis árktalaš guovllu verddet!
Thank you, Mr Chair.
Good afternoon.
The President of the Storting, Dear colleagues and friends of the Arctic!
It is a pleasure for me, in a digital way, to welcome all of you to Sápmi, the homeland of the Sámi people. On behalf of the Sámi Parliament in Norway, and the Sámi Parliamentary Council, I especially like to greet our Indigenous sisters and brothers who are participating at the 14th Conference of Parliamentarians of the Artic Region.
Today, I am in the Sámi Parliament`s office in Guovdageaidnu, my hometown. The Sami people is the people of eight seasons. Now in giđđadálvi, the springwinter, we are worried about the consequences of climate change in our region. The tundra is still covered by snow, and the reindeer has started to migrate from the inland to the coast. The reindeer herders are working day and night. This month, April, is called cuoŋománnu in the northern Sámi language. Cuoŋu means the hard crust you get on top of snow, when the top layer has started to melt a bit at daytime before freezing again at night. It is not ice, it is still snow, but it has been bound together when freezing. If the crust is strong enough, you can ski, or even walk, across it without sinking into the deep snow underneath. That is why the reindeer herders move after the reindeer during nighttime. It is easier to move forward on crust snow. Having said that, I hope this conference will be like that, despite climate changes, and even though we do not work at night.
This example from the Sami way of living explains why the Sami languages have several hundreds of terms connected to snow quality and moving and working in and on the snow. We have that in common with other Arctic Indigenous peoples. Our languages are the gateway to our worldview, and our languages are the knowledge storage of our collective wisdom. This is why I am so pleased that the states we live in have supported the UN International Decade of Indigenous Languages (IDIL) to take place from 2022-31. I encourage Arctic parliamentarians to follow up on the Decade on a national level, to secure the future of the Languages of Indigenous Peoples.
I am looking forward to the presentations and discussions on different themes in the program. Like others, the Sámi people are struggling with the consequenses of covid-19 . Our territories are divided by the borders of four states. Due to the pandemic, border traffic has been restricted since March 2020. Restrictions have had a significant impact on the Sámi society. It has affected our economic, social and cultural life. Family and social relations have been strongly disrupted, and this have especially affected our youth, children and elders.
For the future, the lesson should be that the states that have made borders across the Sami homelands needs to coordinate and harmonise pandemic regulations and restrictions.
When it comes to the important theme Sustainable Arctic Business, I will underline that business and industry that promote employment and settlement are usually a prerequisite for preserving and developing culture and society. However, Indigenous peoples have special international legal protection for our land and resource base. Such protection may provide a foundation for continuing and renewing established or traditional industries, as well as for the development of new businesses.
This conferences statement points to the Arctic Investment Protocol as a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) model. We support that corporations should uphold respect for human rights, but there is to date little evidence that CSR instruments have impacted corporate behaviour in significant ways when it comes to resource extraction in Indigenous territories.
We would like to remind the Arctic parliamentarians that the states are ultimately responsible for ensuring that human rights, including those of Indigenous peoples, are upheld within its jurisdiction. The AIP is in our view to limited in scope, and is lacking when it comes to control mechanisms. I hope to get back to this later in the conference.
Mr Chair,
I am looking forward two inspiring days here. I believe we have a lot to learn from each other as we exchange good ideas and discuss potential future solutions.
Thank you for your attention! Ollu giitu!