The government has not done much to calm the conflict with the Sami.
This is a comment. The comment expresses the writer’s positionIn the middle of central Oslo, the police forcefully remove young activists in Sami Kofte. Over 500 days have passed. The protesters have lost patience.
Early on Monday morning, Ella Marie Hætta Isaksen and a number of indigenous and nature activists were supported by Greta Thunberg. They blocked the front door of the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy and made chain links.
They demand that the windmills at Storheia and Roan be demolished. These are winter pastures for reindeer at Fosen.
The problem started when the ministry gave up in 2013, before the conflict with the reindeer husbandry Sami had been settled.
Later, the state suffered a stinging defeat in the Supreme Court. The judgment stated that the reindeer husbandry Sami’s rights had been violated by the wind farms.
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Despite human rights violations, the windmills continue to spin.
The production of reindeer meat has become so low that Agriculture Minister Sandra Borch recently said that reindeer husbandry is threatened.
The state administrator in Trøndelag believes “there is cause for great concern for future reindeer husbandry in both the short and long term at Fosen,” according to Adresseavisen.
In summary, the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy committed two mistakes: First, they awarded a license too quickly.
Then, when it turned out that the concession was not valid, they did not get the finger out.
That the judgment went against the state came as a shock to established Norway.
The ministry talks about the need to collect more knowledge and points out that the Supreme Court did not say that the windmills should be demolished.
But pointing out that the Supreme Court did not require the mills to be demolished is a prosecutor’s trick. The Supreme Court never says anything about what is outside the subject of the case.
It is also said that the reindeer herding Sami lost the case in the Court of Appeal. But it is not so surprising. It is the Supreme Court that has the position to challenge the power. We are talking about a radical and dramatic judgment that does not end in the lower instances.
Compensation can in some cases resolve such disputes. It has happened several times before.
But if it is the survival of Sami culture that is being fought for, it is more difficult.
Reindrift Samer says there are no other grazing areas on Fosen that can be offered. There has been talk of transporting reindeer by boat across the fjord. But then the culture disappears from Fosen.
The Court of Appeal thought that compensation could be given to the reindeer herders so that they can buy winter fodder.
But then you no longer engage in Sami reindeer husbandry, which was what you were supposed to preserve.
The government is clear that they want the windmills to remain standing. They want “mitigation measures” that make it possible to continue reindeer husbandry. So either money or replacement grazing.
And there is undoubtedly a lot that is stupid about demolishing the mills.
Huge values are lost. And the state has to pay large sums of compensation to the developer, who put up the wind turbines in good faith, with the state’s permission.
Norway is also in the middle of a power crisis. Valuable green power that we need will disappear. Which results in higher electricity prices.
What should the government do?
When you have a Supreme Court judgment against you, you may need to do something that is clearly visible, before it has become as locked in as this.
Perhaps the authorities could quickly after the verdict withdraw the license and stop the operation.
They could then try to find a solution that did not necessarily have to end in demolition.
It would signal that they took the judgment seriously.
But now this has become so deadlocked that a solution seems more distant than ever.
