The reindeer People
- The Reindeer People
The big event for everyone is the Reindeer Herders Congress in Kautokeino, in the Norwegian Finnmark. To this small town, the capital of the Sami culture, delegations have come from throughout the Arctic for a week of conferences, meetings, solidarity and friendship.
The 4-yearly congress brings together representatives of 20 or so indigenous ethnic groups from the Arctic, with different languages, politics and histories but one, centrally important common denominator, the reindeer.
So in a festival of round tables, sporting events, concerts and other entertainment, these folks talk about and compare their experiences and learn about each other's cultures, dreams and plans.
It's the desire to develop through co-operation.
It's an extremely important moment for these peoples: the host group, in this case the Sami, show how they live today, the fruit of constant efforts to balance tradition and innovation.
Only 70,000 people live in this immense yet diverse and variegated Arctic territory.
With no possibility of choice, they very often have to suffer the consequences of policies made far way in the “southern world”.
Anders is optimistic, saying that they, the nomads, have a great quality: the capacity to adapt. This is one reason why they aren't unduly afraid of climate change.
But they are certainly anxious when they see plants that never used to grow in the tundra and realise that spring is getting longer every year.
And it's not only climate change that worries them: the other big problem is to strike a balance between development and respect for the environment.
This is a burning issue for people living in total dependence on nature, like these Arctic indigenous folk. The construction of oil pipelines, refuges or just tourism with its snow-cats, jars the temperament of the reindeer, a sensitive animal which finds it hard to adapt to anthropization.
Without proper controls, the “southern world” may unintentionally alter the ecosystem and cause the death of an entire civilization.
The people haven't turned their backs on the modern age and its technological innovation.
They know that the challenges facing the world today mean a balance, between modernity and tradition, must be achieved in their society too.
The main aims of this Congress, in fact, include increasing school attendance and literacy rates and, in general, developing culture for people who live, and want to continue living, in the Arctic.
Schooling and collaboration between these ethnic groups will become vital resources in the drive to save the future of the reindeer people.
