Sweden's treatment of Indigenous people

See Her Culture Was Suppressed for Centuries. Now It Powers Her Best Seller.. By Lisa Abend of The NY Times. Excerpts:

"Ann-Helén Laestadius grew up among the Sámi, an Indigenous people living near the Arctic Circle, in Europe. Her novel, “Stolen,” a success in her native Sweden, reflects that culture to a broad audience."

"An Indigenous people, the Sámi, who number around 80,000, inhabit a vast territory that stretches across the Arctic areas of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia’s Kola Peninsula. For centuries, their language and culture have been forcibly suppressed by national governments that also stripped their land rights and developed industries that threatened the habitats on which their livelihoods and culture depend.

To this day, the Sámi are engaged in legal and political struggles to protect their lands from mineral and timber extraction, and their herding routes from energy projects. And although the Nordic countries are widely perceived, both abroad and at home, as progressive and egalitarian, many of the Sámi who live within their borders say they remain targets of discrimination, racism and — through their reindeer — violence.

A case in point: After the Swedish Supreme Court in 2020 granted the Sámi the exclusive right to manage hunting and fishing rights in the area of Girjas Samby, near the Norwegian border, reindeer killings (which had long plagued the community), increased markedly. It was an expression, many Sámi believe, of anger among local Swedes who resented losing their hunting rights to a people they had long denigrated. “They kill our reindeer,” Laestadius said, “because they can’t kill us.”"