The purpose of this bachelor’s thesis is to examine the views that were held within the Sami society during the year 1992 regarding the proposal of a Sami Parliament in Sweden. Therefore, the magazine Samefolket [The Sami people] has here been subjected to discourse analysis, primely based on two key words: Peoples and self-determination. The analysis was limited to the issues published in the year 1992 since the Swedish government on 15th October 1992 first published the proposition which among other things established a Sami Parliament in Sweden. Examining all twelve monthly issues of the magazine that year, this essay aims to track the shift in discourse among the Sami People when the governments proposition was published. In order to extract the relevant information, the following three questions were posed:
1. How was the internal Sami discourse regarding the Sami Parliament represented in Samefolket before the proposition was published?
2. How was the same discourse represented after the proposition was published?
3. To what extent did the Sami-political movement rely on terms that were established within the international indigenous discourse?
The results showed that the discourse before the publishing of the proposition was distinguished by two underlying themes: hope and fear. Hope for retribution after centuries of mistreatment, discrimination and segregation. This hope for retribution was expressed in a want for formal self-determination based on a recognition of the Sami as a people, a balancing of land-rights given to different groups within the Sami community, as well as formal support for the vitality of the Sami languages. The fear was that the proposition would not fulfil these hopes, but rather serve as a powerless artefact for the Swedish government to improve their own reputation.
When the proposition was published on October 15th, it clearly stated that there would be a Sami Parliament but no self-determination and that the Same were a minority, not a people. Some funding was assigned to preserve the Sami languages but no structural changes in policy were made. In terms of balancing the land-rights, some rights were removed from reindeerherders and given to the Swedish population in general. This was described by the government as a balancing of rights among the Sami. As a result of this, the proposition was widely received with anger and disappointment, those that had been most skeptical before-hand expressed that they had been right in that the Swedish government could not be trusted. The sami-political organizations agreed that they wanted the Sami Parliament but not the rest, nevertheless the full proposition was made into law in December 1992. Finally, the results also show that the most prominent spokespersons from within the Sami Society relied heavily on terms established within the international indigenous movement, both beforehand when arguing for what the proposition should contain, as well as after October 15th when arguing against the proposition.
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