The Saami: Custodians of Our Planet

Áslak Holmberg, President of the Saami Council, is a
pioneering leader who fights for the rights of 80.000 Indigenous
people in the Arctic - on the global stage.


Speaking at the UN, the IPCC or in Davos, Áslak makes sure
the world understands what it means to be Indigenous in the
middle of Europe; being European citizens, whose rights to their
land, their water and their traditional way of making a living,
through fishing and reindeer herding, is being denied. 


“We are colonized by 4 European
countries: Finland, Norway, Russia and Sweden. That
means, we are not in charge of our own territories, governing or
livelihood.” 





Throughout this Podcast my key thought is, “How can we sustain
the planet if we don’t empower the very people who dedicate their
life to it ?” 


In our conversation, Àslak and I talk about:


 Indigenous communities as
the Custodians of our planet,
because they live in peace with nature. They are driven by
sustainability, not by growth, by their love of the environment
not by terrorizing it. 


 Despite comprising 5% of the world‘s population,
Indigenous people protect 80% of the Earth's biodiversity.
We are in urgent need of their knowledge if
we really want to tackle climate change and the
loss of biodiversity.


 The Saami deserve a seat at the table – so do all
representatives of the global Indigenous community. There are
more than 476 million Indigenous people in the world, spread
across 90 countries and representing 5,000 different cultures,
living in all geographic regions. 


 Since 2007, the UN’s Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples contains a legally vague, yet symbolically
significant, recognition of Indigenous people’s rights over the
development of their own territories. It can only be just the
start. 


 Today, young leaders like Áslak are being listened to in
the international arena – but not in the nation states that
occupy them and strip them of their
rights. Norway, for example, has illegally built the
world’s largest onshore wind farm with 1.000 turbines on
Saami land, effectively killing one of the two ways the Saami can
make a living in that area. 


 Áslak has for the past decade worked with Saami and
indigenous issues through NGOs, the Saami parliament,
as well as through activism and academia. He is a fisherman,
teacher and holds a master’s degree in Indigenous studies. 


Saami Council - World Economic Forum - Host