The Indigenous parliaments of Sweden, Finland and Norway have warned that some Sámi languages could disappear if Stockholm and Helsinki press ahead with plans to withdraw funding that could hit a critical preservation body.
Sámi Giellagáldu was created to safeguard, promote and strengthen the use of the nine Sámi languages across the Nordics, including North Sámi, which is spoken by an estimated 20,000 people across Norway, Sweden and Finland and classified by Unesco as endangered, and the much smaller Pite Sámi and Ute Sámi, which have less than 50 speakers each.
But just two years after it was made a permanent institution working to promote the languages and develop new terminology and standardisations essential for keeping them alive, the Swedish and Finnish governments have announced funding cuts.
Mika Saijets, the director general of Sámi Giellagáldu, described it as a regressive step that would take the region “50 years backward” and accused the governments of “cutting the heart out of the language”.
There is a tangible risk that the languages could vanish as a result, he said. “It’s a big risk that some of these languages will disappear. All Sámi languages are defined as threatened or critically threatened according to Unesco.”
There are 80,000 to 100,000 Sámi people in northern Europe, the continent’s only Indigenous group.
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Sweden is to cut 5m Swedish kroner (£365,000) a year for the organisation – a contribution that it says was always a “temporary investment” – and the Finnish government is understood to be cutting €193,000 (£160,000) of targeted funding to the Sámi parliament of Finland, forcing it to reconsider allocation of funds.
“It’s so dramatic. We have been in complete shock,” Saijets said, adding that if the funding is cut as planned, the organisation will not survive beyond a year.
He compared the cuts to the past attempts at the Swedification, Finlandisation and Norwegianisation of Indigenous people.
The cuts come as truth and reconciliation commissions by governments across the region have pledged to uncover and respond to historic systemic discrimination – including church- and state-run assimilation policies that separated children from their parents and stopped many from learning the language, violence and mistreatment.
The cuts also hit two years in to the UN’s International Decade of Indigenous Languages.
The Nordic Council of Ministers is due to meet in Reykjavík this week to discuss cooperation across the region. Saijets has called on the Swedish and Finnish governments to urgently reconsider their decision.
Silje Karine Muotka and Pirita Näkkäläjärvi, the presidents of the Sámi parliaments in Norway and Finland, and Håkan Jonsson, the chair of the board of the Sámi parliament in Sweden, said in a joint statement: “The three Nordic countries have a great responsibility towards the Sami-speaking population and the nine different Sami languages.
“Funds that have previously been earmarked to support language standardisation have been removed, thereby jeopardising the basis for all language work and for common Nordic language efforts.”
The Swedish government has said the future of the body is the responsibility of the Sámi parliament. “The Sámi parliament has had during 2022–2024 a temporary increase in funds for Sámi Giellagáldu,” said the Swedish minister for culture, Parisa Liljestrand.
“It has always been clear that it was a temporary investment, and when it now ends, the Sámi parliament can, within the framework of the allocation of funds decided by the government in regulatory letters, decide on possible continued funding of Sámi Giellagáldu.”
The Finnish government did not respond to a request for comment.
Lotta Jalava, a senior specialist in minority languages and language revitalisation at the Institute for the Languages of Finland, said: “The continuity of all Sámi languages for future generations and the support of their vitality requires, among other things, people proficient in Sámi languages working in various professions, Sámi-language translations of official texts, and translators.”
For a minority language, she added, such work was “even more important than for a majority language” because the number of people able to guide language use, introduce new expressions and standardise writing principles was considerably smaller.