Across the Arctic north, reindeer still follow routes that have shaped Sámi life for generations, tying people to land, culture and identity.
Now University of Auckland Law School Professor Claire Charters is heading to Sápmi to study the Indigenous political institutions that have emerged from that history.
Charters (Ngāti Whakaue, Tūwharetoa, Ngāpuhi, Tainui) has received a $10,000 Borrin Foundation Travel and Learning Award to examine Sámi governance institutions and what they might offer Aotearoa New Zealand.
The Sámi, who number about 80,000 across Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia’s Kola Peninsula, are the only recognised Indigenous people in the European Union. In response to pressure on their land, culture and political rights, representative bodies known as Sámi parliaments were established in Norway, Finland and Sweden.
Charters will attend sessions of the parliaments, meet parliamentarians and members of the Sámi Council, and connect with experts in Sámi law and governance at the University of Tromsø, the University of Helsinki, and the University of Oulu.
“The Sámi parliaments in Norway, Finland and Sweden are utterly fascinating as mechanisms to realise Indigenous peoples’ self-determination, even if they only do so imperfectly,” says Charters, who co-directs the Aotearoa New Zealand Centre for Indigenous Peoples and the Law.
“There are so many lessons we can learn to apply in Aotearoa. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to undertake research on the parliaments in situ.”
Her research will focus on the relevance of Sámi constitutional arrangements to Indigenous governance in Aotearoa, at a time when questions about Māori political authority, self-determination and constitutional transformation remain central.
Charters says her broader work in Indigenous peoples’ rights, in Aotearoa and internationally, is driven by a passion for justice for Māori and other Indigenous peoples in light of the impact of colonisation, together with consequential structural and socio-economic inequities.
