Belonging to Sápmi: Sámi conceptions of home and home region

This chapter examines the ways in which the Sami imagine and experience the idea of Sapmi, and the particular worldviews and values that are attached to Sami conceptions of home and homeland. Sami are Indigenous people attached to a region spanning four countries, from Central Norway and Central Sweden across Finnish Lapland to the Kola Peninsula in Russia. The Sami call this region their homeland, Sapmi. The chapter examines Sapmi as the Sami's home region by analysing different ways in which the Sami relate to the area, and the ways these relationships are expressed–in the context of material and immaterial culture. The Sami community has traditionally been organised into siidas. The siida-based way of life did not mean that the Sami had no contacts with people outside their own siidas. During the post-war period, the encroachment of state interests onto Sami land for example through national legislation has caused the breakdown of the siida system.