Det folkvalda samiska organet Sametinget instiftades i Sverige 1993. Det var en viktig utveckling i samernas politiska mobilisering eftersom de inte tidigare haft ett nationellt representativt organ. Vid instiftandet blev organet både ett folkvalt parlament och en statlig förvaltningsmyndighet, vilket skapade konflikter mellan samernas vilja till ökat självbestämmande och statens strävan att kontrollera Sametingets verksamhet. I föreliggande kvalitativa undersökning undersöks därför de diskussioner som förelåg i den samiska tidningen Samefolket under Sametingets inrättande 1990-1994. Undersökningen visar dels hur ledande politiska representanter från de nybildade samiska partierna resonerade i frågan, dels hur andra samiska aktörer betraktade Sametinget. Vidare påvisar undersökningens resultat att diskussionerna förändrades under den undersökta perioden och att inre konflikter ökade till följd av Sametingets inrättande. Trots att en vision med Sametinget var att ena det samiska folket, visar föreliggande undersökning att organets tillkomst istället kom att splittra gruppen under den undersökta perioden. / The Sámi Parliament, a popularly elected Sámi organ was established in Sweden in 1993. This was an important process for the political advancement of the Sámi people, since they never before had had a nationally representative body. At the founding, the body became both an elected parliament and an administrative agency for the state. This created conflicts between the Sámi peoples' desire of increased independence and the goverment's need to control and rule. Therefore, the present qualitative study investigates the discussions that appeared in the Sámi magazine Samefolket during the Sámi Parliament's institutionalisation 1990-1994. The examination partly shows how the leading political representatives from the newly founded Sámi parties argued and partly how other Sámi actors regarded its institutionalisation. Furthermore, the results of the investigation suggest that the discussions changed during the investigated period and that the amount of conflicts increased following the institutionalisation of the Sámi Parliament. Even though the vision for the Sámi Parliament was to unite the Sámi people, the present study shows that the creation of this organ shattered the unity of the Sámi during the investigated period.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore how different versions of sovereignty manifestthemselves in the central founding documents relating to the Sámi parliament in bothNorway and Sweden. This analysis of the different approaches to sovereignty could beused to give an explanation to the differences between the Sámi parliaments in Norwayand Sweden. The research questions of this thesis were: Within central foundingdocuments can one see different versions of sovereignty between Sweden and Norway?What differences can one observe between the countries in relation to ideas regardinginternal and external sovereignty? To answer these questions, different theories ofsovereignty were presented and evaluated. This thesis used content analysis with adeductive approach and the primary materials that were analysed were the founding legaldocuments and law propositions to the Sámi parliaments. The major finding of this thesispaper were that Norway and Sweden were observably different when it came to theirversions of sovereignty, in conclusion Sweden had a stricter adherence to internalsovereignty and Norway was exceedingly more orthodox and put more effort into theirexternal sovereignty.

In 1993, Sweden instituted the Sámi Parliament (Sámediggi) as a state agency with the main purpose of representing the indigenous Sámi people externally, as well as monitoring internal cultural affairs, governed by a popularly elected assembly. In the absence of official statistics on the Sámi population, or any formally recognized approaches to define who should count as Sámi, one of the challenging tasks was to create an accurate register of all those who would be eligible to take part in the elections. The idea was to design an electoral roll that would be normatively neutral and have no other functions beyond its core function of being a list of eligible voters, a concept that had already been put in use during the previous initiations of the Sámi Parliaments in Norway and Finland. Previous research from similar contexts, most prominently Norway, shows that electoral rolls of this sort might be attributed other functions by indigenous populations, especially in the absence of other formal devices that can be used to confirm their indigenous identity. It appears that the electoral roll might, under certain circumstances, assume an important and far-reaching role in indigenous institution building. In Sweden, however, similar research is missing. In this study, I examine perceptions within the indigenous Sámi community regarding the central functions of the electoral roll using a constructivist, discourse-theoretic approach. A systematic mapping out of the discourse surrounding the electoral roll, as reflected in public records from within the political sphere of the Sámi Parliament and relevant accounts in Sámi media, reveals that the electoral roll is attributed functions by the Sámi population that go far beyond its original, formalistic design. The act of formally defining a people, regardless of the limitations of the purpose, can seemingly cause unintended and far-reaching consequences, especially when the people itself does not control the definition. The analysis shows a fundamental conflict regarding the competing functions of the electoral roll as both an instrument of representation and a mechanism of identity validation. This influences the power structures between the Sámi people and the Swedish state as well as within the people itself, and affects the ability of the Sámi Parliament to gain legitimacy as an indigenous institution and instrument of self-determination.

Finland is recognized as a country with high human rights standards including the rights of the indigenous people that are protected by various declarations, conventions, and international human rights laws. Finland first enacted a Sámi Parliament Act in 1995 and has most recently in 2019 received criticism from the UN Human Rights Committee for not guaranteeing the rights for the legally recognized indigenous Sámi people living within Finland’s borders. Government proposal to reform the Act sparked the discussion of Sámi rights in Finland in the fall of 2022. Through a critical postcolonial perspective together with examining purposeful sampling material and the reform opposing discourse in the Finnish parliament, this thesis aims to get a view for the reason of the dismissal of the reform. It suggests that Finland’s position as a human rights model country in indigenous people’s rights is questionable in the matter of the Sámi rights.

The work investigates the relationship the Swedish indigenous people, the Sámi people, have towards their cultural remains in the Sámi cultural landscape. It is investigated through a qualitative-comparative literature studie which is primarily conducted through an analysis of four websites; two Sámi controlled websites and two swedish county administration controlled websites. The relationship the Sámi people have towards their ancient cultural remains can be seen through studies of their relationship towards graves and old settlement remains, (swe:kåtatomter) which reflects a relationship that is contested by factors such as the threat of exploitation of the Sámi cultural landscape, and by the challenges that comes with repatriation cases. The work emanates from a postcolonial perspective which can be seen throughout the entire work and which is primarily based on reconciliation as a concept within postcolonial theory