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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   34791 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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I mean, my priors are distinctly that a group gets to determine its own membership- if the Sami prefer to be defined by language, I’m totally fine with that. If they’d rather define themselves by blood quantum, the way most Amerinds in North America do, that’s also fine. What I don’t think is ok is the idea that the Finnish parliament gets to tell them who does and doesn’t count as Sami when they are, as far as anyone can tell, not gaining anything from that Finnish government.

a group gets to determine its own membership

Isn't the problem that this is circular? In order for the group to make a determination, you have to ask the people in the group. But knowing who gets to contribute their opinion is exactly the question you're trying to answer in the first place. The "simple" answer is freedom of association, where you can have multiple groups that do or do not overlap, or include each other as subgroups, and which have their own rules that may come from consensus, democracy, a charter, a dictatorship, etc, and members can come and go as they please. But this doesn't work when one group has special privileges that are being fought over.

It kind of seems like that group has a consensus as to who counts as a Sami- a person who speaks a Sami language as a first language and has a recent ancestor who is the same. The lap paragraph looks like a distinctly peripheral group and if a group wants to exclude a periphery, that’s fine, they can be their own thing and it’s up to them to convince the Finnish parliament they should get whatever privileges the Sami get.

that group has a consensus as to who counts as a Sami

Yes, but Democrats and Republicans have very distinct ideas about who counts as a "real" American.

If you asked either side to define US citizenship, you can bet a bunch of their outgroup ain't gonna make the cut. And that in turn means the citizens who then vote on US policy are a subgroup of an already biased sample.

While I can't speak to the facts on the ground in this particular case, this seems like a good way to end up with a few people speaking for all of the group, and encourages the leadership to exclude as many as possible to reduce competition. I think if the Finnish government is going to do this, it might be a good idea to be more precise about its official Sami representation. For example, if the periphery is excluded, then (if possible) the parliament's scope should be re-assessed to make sure it isn't being given credit for that periphery's population, land, language, unique cultural aspects, etc.

Yes, that's the Sámi Parliament's view. Blood quantums would be very hard to establish anyway.

Of course the opposition's view is that if the Sámi Parliament does not represent all the Sámi - ie. purposefully shuts a part of them out - it does not have the legitimacy to define Sámi-dom on everyone's behalf, either.

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