Peer-reviewed article

Arctic Review on Law and Politics
Vol. 14, 2023, pp. 140–168

Wind Energy on Trial in Saepmie: Epistemic Controversies and Strategic Ignorance in Norway’s Green Energy Transition

Eva Maria Fjellheim

UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Norway

Abstract

Climate change policies and the green energy transition have renewed colonial structures and injustices for Indigenous peoples in land-use conflicts, but not without resistance. This article explores epistemic controversies in a legal struggle concerning impacts from wind energy infrastructure on Southern Saami reindeer herding and culture in Norway. The article draws on courtroom ethnography and diverse written material concerning a court case between the wind energy company Fosen Vind DA and the Southern Saami reindeer herders in Fovsen Njaarke Sïjte. The findings show that the parties’ competing claims to truth rely on different knowledge systems and worldviews concerning what Southern Saami reindeer herding is an ought to be. However, beyond onto-epistemological struggles between the “Indigenous” and the “Western”, Fosen Vind DA and the Norwegian state strategically ignored all knowledges that threatened capitalist and green colonial interests. The Fosen case illustrates how Indigenous peoples can contest dominant knowledge regimes and colonial presumptions about their livelihoods, culture, and rights through the legal system. However, the Norwegian state’s reluctancy to respect the outcome of the Supreme Court verdict reveals that asymmetric power relations continue to pave the way for colonial dispossession of Saami landscapes, epistemes, and human rights in the green energy transition.

Keywords: Southern Saami reindeer herding, green colonialism, courtroom ethnography, Indigenous epistemes, strategic ignorance, Indigenous peoples’ rights

Responsible Editor: Øyvind Ravna, Faculty of Law, UiT The Arctic University of Norway

Received: April 2023; Accepted: June 2023; Published: August 2023

Correspondence to: Eva Maria Fjellheim, e-mail: eva.m.fjellheim@uit.no

Citation: Eva Maria Fjellheim. “Wind Energy on Trial in Saepmie: Epistemic Controversies and Strategic Ignorance in Norway’s Green Energy Transition” Arctic Review on Law and Politics, Vol. 14, 2023, pp. 140–168. http://doi.org/10.23865/arctic.v14.5586

1 Introduction

“Baajh vaeride årrodh. Baajh vaeride årrodh!” [Let the mountains live!], was shouted repeatedly in the Southern Saami language outside the Frostating Court of Appeal on a grey December morning in 2019, in the city of Tråante¹ on the Norwegian side of Åarjel Saepmie – the Southern Saami homelands.² A group of Southern Saami activists and environmentalist allies had gathered to protest against Fosen Vind’s construction of one of Europe’s largest onshore wind energy complexes on the Fosen peninsula across the fjord. The protesters questioned the environmental impacts of the project and its implications for Southern Saami reindeer herding, as the large-scale wind energy infrastructure had dispossessed Fovsen Njaarke, a reindeer herding community on the Fovsen peninsula, of its crucial winter pastures. Beating drums, appeals and shouted slogans made up the soundscape that received the parties on the first day of the court hearings and reflected growing discontent over Norway’s so-called “green transition” agenda.³ Inside the courtroom, Fosen Vind and Fovsen Njaarke disputed the impacts the wind energy infrastructure has on Southern Saami reindeer herding and culture. While the company argued that wind energy development and Saami reindeer herding can and should coexist, the Saami reindeer herders argued it violates their right to enjoy their culture in the landscapes which historically belong to them.⁴

The Fosen Vind project constitutes the largest encroachment on Saami homelands in history, and is linked to Norway’s commitments to international climate policy, EU’s renewable energy goals and demands to electrify industry and society in general.⁵ Critical scholarship has questioned the limits of green growth and a technological quick-fix to solve the ecological and climate crisis.⁶ Despite low-carbon emissions, renewable energy infrastructures have renewed historical patterns of colonialism, capitalism and extractivism.⁷ Wind energy development requires vast space to generate energy⁸ and exacerbates mineral extraction,⁹ causing infrastructural harm and environmental, psychosocial, and cultural impacts on rural and Indigenous communities in both the Global North and South.¹⁰ Decolonial perspectives on the energy transition focus on dismantling power asymmetries which are upheld through the colonial structures that persist in contemporary societies.¹¹

In the Nordic-Saami context, injustices occuring in processes of wind energy development have been termed “green coloialism”.¹² First publicly expressed in 2013 by the former president of the Saami Parliament in Norway, Aili Keskitalo, the concept has been used as a political narrative¹³ to contest Norway’s climate change policies and the non-concensual expansion of wind energy projects on Saami reindeer herding lands. While Fosen Vind and other wind energy companies argue that the industry is necessary to achieve climate goals, Saami authorities, organizations and impacted reindeer herding communities assert that it violates Saami rights to self-determination,¹⁴ destroys cultural landscapes, and threatens the wellbeing of both herders and reindeer.¹⁵ Legitimized by paternalist and moral discourses of wind energy as “green, good and necessary”, the industry has exacerbated historical dispossessions of Saami reindeer herding lands and practices.¹⁶ The Arctic has the highest rise in temperatures due to climate change,¹⁷ posing severe threats to Saami health, livelihoods, and culture.¹⁸ Paradoxically, Saami reindeer herding thus faces a double colonial burden; from climate change itself and its mitigation measures.

This article addresses Norway’s green colonial energy transition by exploring the epistemic dimensions of wind energy controversies. Previous research in Saepmie has studied epistemic injustice in natural resource management, land-use planning and licensing processes.¹⁹ Reflecting international tendencies,²⁰ Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) in the Nordic countries have been critiqued for being industry-owned, positivist, and lacking in Saami knowledges and worldviews.²¹ Asymmetric and colonial power relations between Saami and “Western” knowledge systems have been identified in state regulation of Saami fishing²² and reindeer herding.²³ Importantly, these contestations are not considered as a binary opposition between the “Indigenous” and the “Western”, but rather as “situated at the intersection of dominant ways of knowing and Other forms of caring for humans and other-than-humans”.²⁴

Struggling for self-determination over “culturally distinct livelihoods, lifeways and cosmovisions”,²⁵ reindeer herding communities are increasingly resisting and challenging state and corporate perceptions of what constitutes legitimate knowledge and what has a significant impact on Saami reindeer herding and culture.²⁶ This has challenged decision-makers with competing claims to truth.²⁷ Here, disagreements between reindeer herders, the state, and companies reflect struggles over what kind, and whose knowledge determine impacts. It also concerns conflicting ontologies, or worldviews, in the consideration of what is at stake when large-scale infrastructure disrupts Saami landscapes.²⁸ Nevertheless, the possibility of achieving self-determination over Saami livelihoods and culture in land-use conflicts has shown to be limited, as these struggles take place within state governance structures and market relations which rearticulate and reaffirm capitalist and colonial rationalities and strategies. The Nordic states have the final say in decisions over resource extraction and there is a lack of legal and political recognition of Saami ancestral lands and waters.²⁹

In this article, I am concerned with how impacts from wind energy infrastructure on Southern Saami reindeer herding and culture are contested in the courtroom. Illustrated by the Fosen case, the main research task is to analyze how conflicting knowledges and worldviews shape and maintain the competing claims to truth put forward by the parties in court, but also how ignorance is actively and strategically produced to promote capitalist³⁰ and colonial³¹ interests. First, I provide background on Southern Saami reindeer herding, Indigenous Rights in Norway and the Fosen case (2). Then I present the methodological and ethical approach based on courtroom ethnography and document analysis (3). The main discussions (4) build on ethnographic fragments from the hearings of the Frostating Court of Appeal in 2019 and diverse written material from the court bundle. However, as the Fosen case is the first of its kind settled in the Norwegian court system I analyze how both the Court of Appeal (2020) and the Supreme Court (2021) dealt with the competing truth claims. Finally, I discuss the parties’ reactions to how the government sought to implement the legally binding verdict of the Supreme Court. Following court procedure, the article ends with a “concluding argument” from the point of view of the researcher (5).

2 Southern Saami reindeer herding and Indigenous peoples’ rights in Norway

The Saami have resisted colonial domination by four nation-states, in terms of territorial dispossessions, Christian mission activities, scientific racism, and assimilation politics, among other atrocities.³² Åarjel Saepmie, the Southern Saami homelands, has its own colonial history and legacy with implications for the current status and practice of Saami reindeer herding, culture, and rights.³³ The Southern Saami population in Norway and Sweden is a minority within the larger Saami society, and the Southern Saami language is considered to be severely threatened by UNESCO.³⁴

Båatsoe, southern Saami reindeer herding, is an ancient way of pastoralism, characterized by the breeding, herding, and caring for semi-domesticated reindeer that seasonally migrate between extensive and uncultivated pastures. To adapt to climate change and avoid degradation, a sustainable use of the seasonal pastures depends on flexible access to vast landscapes.³⁵ Today, a significant proportion of the Southern Saami population in Norway are reindeer owners³⁶ and many are second- or third-generation descendants of reindeer herding families. Båatsoe and its ancestral land-use is thus not only important for subsistence, but is considered to be the backbone of Southern Saami culture, language, and identity.³⁷

The Reindeer Herding Act establishes Norway’s obligation to safeguard reindeer herding as the material base for Saami culture. Norway was the first country to ratify the ILO Convention No. 169 on the Rights of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in 1990 and adopted the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007. § 108 of the Norwegian Constitution and article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in the Norwegian Human Rights Law, protect the Saami’s right to enjoy their culture, including reindeer herding.³⁸ Despite increased legal protection, Southern Saami reindeer herding culture is under high pressure from competing land-uses and their negative cumulative impacts.³⁹ Norway’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s recently pubilshed report,⁴⁰ which assessed the Norwegianization policies and other injustices the State conducted towards the Saami, concluded that this implementation gap still has assimilating effects for Saami reindeer herding communities today.

2.1 Fovsen Njaarke Sïjte and the Fosen Vind DA projects

Fovsen Njaarke is the Southern Saami name for the Fosen peninsula and the reindeer herding community impacted by the Fosen Vind DA wind energy complex. Fovsen Njaarke Sïjte consists of two separate groups, referred to in this article as the North Siida and the South Sïjte.⁴¹ Siida/Sïjte is a Saami term for one or several families, often related, who share collective responsibility, but individual ownership of reindeer within a designated area. In Fovsen Njaarke, the two family groups use separate pastures during the whole migratory year and are impacted by different projects in the Fosen Vind DA complex.

Fosen Vind DA consists of six projects comprised of 278 wind turbines and has a yearly production of 3.6 TWh. It is a joint-venture company owned and operated by the Norwegian energy companies Statkraft (52.1 %) and Aneo (7.9 %),⁴² and foreign investors in Nordic Wind Power DA (40%).⁴³ The Norwegian system operator Statnett owns the upgraded 420kv power lines which connect Fosen Vind DA to the national grid. In 2021, Statkraft sold its shares from one of the projects which then became a separate company called Roan Vind DA owned by Aneo Roan Vind Holding (60%)⁴⁴ and Nordic Wind Power (40%).⁴⁵ Fosen Vind DA and Statnett, however, were the responsible industry parties in the legal process addressed in this article between 2017 and 2021 which concerned four of the six projects on Fovsen Njaarke’s winter pastures; Storheia in the South Sïjte, and Roan, Kvenndalsfjellet, and Harbaksfjellet in the North Siida.

The Fosen Vind DA complex was given a final license by the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy (OED) in 2013, but in 2015 the main share holder Statkraft announced they would withdraw due to lack of profitability.⁴⁶ However, due to a push from the local mayor in Åfjord and with international capital on board, the project proceeded⁴⁷ and was issued a pre-approval to construct by OED in 2016. The same year, the Saami Parliament expressed that neither they or Fovsen Njaarke had given their free, prior, and informed consent to the Storheia and Roan projects.⁴⁸ Initially, the North Siida negotiated compensation agreements regarding the three projects which impacted their winter pastures, but broke the dialogue after their demand to keep their third and most important winter pasture at Roan intact was dismissed. The South Sïjte resisted the Storheia project from the beginning and tried to halt construction by filing for a temporary injunction to the District Court in 2017. When their complaint was denied, they sent a communication to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). CERD then urged the Norwegian state to halt the project due to the high risk of human rights violations, but the request was dismissed by OED in 2018.⁴⁹

The Frostating Court of Appeal hearing in December 2019 merged two lawsuits which were treated separately in the District Court: Compensation due to the expropriation of property rights of both the North Siida and the South Sïjte in 2018, and the validity of the license litigated by the South Sïjte in 2017. Paradoxically, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court were to settle the question of validity, even though construction was completed. Despite their initially different strategies, both the North Siida and the South Sïjte claimed that two of the projects, Storheia and Roan, violate their right to enjoy their culture on the lands which historically belong to them, as established in article 27 of the ICCPR.

3 Methodology, ethics and methods

Legal scholars have analysed how the court systems in the Nordic countries deal with Saami rights to culture when wind energy is devloped on Saami reindeer herding lands,⁵⁰ but ethnographic perspectives on these legal struggles are understudied. I thus engage with the courtroom as both a research site and methodological approach to explore epistemic controversies in Norway’s green energy transition. Courtroom ethnography allowed me to access rich material and was a unique opportunity to analyze the competing truth claims of the parties. Access to the court bundles further permitted me to do a comprehensive assessment of evidence alongside the testimonies of expert witnesses and the parties which laid the foundation for the Court’s decision. Importantly, my presence in the courtroom enabled me to “witness” and reflect over power dynamics between the parties through courtroom performances and interactions.⁵¹

The main material for the article comes from observations and interactions with the parties inside and around the Frostating Court of Appeal between 2–13 December 2019. In Norway, most civil cases are open to the public, but all parties were made aware of my presence as a researcher on the first day of the court hearings. As no official recordings were available, I made direct transcriptions of testimonies and notes from interactions, resulting in two hundred written pages. I am thus accountable for all quotes which are reproduced, translated, and analyzed in the article, and for ethical considerations, all testimony has been anonymized.⁵² Recognizing the complexity and extensive scope of the case, this article is limited to address contestations over the impacts of wind energy infrastructure on Saami reindeer herding and culture. In the process of selecting quotes and situations from the court hearings, the transcribed notes were repeatedly read in order to identify patterns and tendencies according to the research task. As only excerpts of evidence were presented by lawyers and expert witnesses in court, relevant documents from the court bundles were scrutinized to ensure that the quotes selected represent the parties’ views and claims. Finally, I analyzed the Frostating Court of Appeal and Supreme Court verdicts to understand how they dealt with the competing claims, as well as written material that reflects the Norwegian state’s and the parties’ reactions, positions, and (in)actions in the aftermath of the historical Supreme Court verdict.

As a Saami scholar exploring decolonial approaches to research,⁵³ I take a committed approach⁵⁴ to struggles against colonial injustices and support Indigenous peoples’ rights. Thus, I question taking a neutral position in research concerning human rights violations, and rather actively negotiate the blurry spaces between activism, advocacy and academia.⁵⁵ The Saami share a colonial history with other Indigenous peoples and are among the most studied peoples in the world.⁵⁶ This calls for urgent ethical considerations beyond consent seeking and participatory processes, even for Indigenous scholars who carry out research in their own communities. Building research relationships on respect, reciprocity and responsibility is a way to “speak back” to colonial research practices and to increase the legitimacy of the research process.⁵⁷ Despite a growing consciousness of relational ethics in research on Saami issues,⁵⁸ research fatigue is reported by reindeer herders facing wind energy development and other extractive industries on their lands.⁵⁹ In this article, I choose to “stand with”⁶⁰ Fovsen Njaarke in solidarity and with care, a much needed stance in and around settler-colonial courts where Indigenous peoples’ legal perceptions, ways of knowing and being are devalued.⁶¹ As such, accountable research relations through courtroom ethnography were sought as an alternative to extensive particiaptory methods, which potentially would risk exhausting the Saami reindeer herders further. During the research process I also engaged in public discussions and shared opinions based on preliminary findings.⁶²

4 The Frostating Court of Appeal: Competing claims to truth

“Do you solemnly affirm that you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”

The Frostating Court of Appeal is like any other court; square, grey, and with strict rules of procedure. For some, the building represents business as usual. For others, it conjures feelings of discomfort and unease beyond the uncomfortable seats and monotonous presentations that make your back ache and eyelids droop after a few hours of listening. For Fovsen Njaarke, the struggle began when the first plans were presented back in 1999. Twenty years later, confronted with Europe’s largest wind energy complex, the future existence of reindeer herding as the Saami reindeer herders know it is at stake. Since the Fosen Vind projects were already built, hopes that the court would recognize the reindeer herders’ claims had dwindled. As one defendant told me before the opening statements were presented on the first day:

We are the guinea pigs of large-scale wind energy and its impacts on Saami reindeer herding in Norway. When the project was launched, everyone applauded it as climate action. Now the general opinion in Norway has changed, but for us I am afraid it is too late.

As I have described elsewhere, the atmosphere and order abruptly changed when the seven judges entered the courtroom: “All rise. From now on, the rule of Law and its language prevails”.⁶³ The two parties were seated on opposite sides of the room, facing each other from a distance. Even though they were the protagonists of the case, their lawyers sat in front and conducted most of the interactions that took place. The lawyers know the “rules of the game” in a place where rationality and rhetoric narrow down the space for spontaneous emotions and diverse forms of knowing.⁶⁴

From one side of the courtroom, Fovsen Njaarke’s lawyers argued that two of the most crucial winter pastures at Roan and Storheia are completely lost, and that impacts from climate change will increase the significance of these pastures in the future. In recent years the winters in the Arctic have been characterized by increased snowfall and fluctuating temperatures, among other challenges, causing frozen and inaccesible pastures for reindeer.⁶⁵ The pastures at Roan and Storheia are located high in the mountains where there are strong wind conditions, which ensure that pastures are always free of snow and ice. The Fosen Vind projects added to multiple dispossessions which have fragmented and accumulated negative impacts in the landscapes on which reindeer herding depends, such as hydropower, power lines, roads, crushing plants, cabins, and ski slopes. As they lack sufficient pastures to maintain the size of the herd, the reindeer herders are left with two painful options: to stop herding, or implement permanent infrastructure for artificial feeding during the winter to compensate for the lost pastures. They argued that the future existence of Saami reindeer herding culture is threatened; by being denied the practice as a whole or by being restricted from using and relating to the landscape according to their knowledges, values and norms – either way, the license permit is invalid.⁶⁶

From the other side of the courtroom, Fosen Vind’s lawyers argued that Fovsen Njaarke have sufficient winter pastures to cope and that wind energy infrastructure and reindeer herding can coexist if certain mitigation measures are implemented, such as extra herding, equipment, and supplementary feeding if needed. According to them, reindeer can pasture between the spinning turbines, power lines and roads, if the Saami herders are only willing to keep them there. Thus, permanent and expensive artificial feeding is not necessary. In addition, they argued that some inconvenience must be accepted without claiming for compensation or a violation of rights. According to the Expropriation Law, they argued, reindeer herders and other rights holders have the duty to adapt to the development needs of the larger society, in this case, Norway’s obligation to produce more renewable energy – and as such, the license permit is valid.⁶⁷

The opening statements of Fosen Vind and Fovsen Njaarke, reveal contestations over the impacts wind energy infrastructure has on Saami reindeer herding culture and landscapes. As declared before the Court, both parties solemnly affirmed to tell the truth, but on what kind of knowledges and worldviews did they base their competing claims?

4.1 Knowledge controversies and competing “facts”

As in any other trial, the parties had to provide evidence to sustain their arguments and claims. Throughout the court hearing, the lawyers presented legal precedence from similar cases in Norway and abroad, Environmental Impact Assessments, research articles and reports on reindeer’s reactions to infrastructure, maps, and more. In addition, the testimonies of the parties and the expert witnesses they called provided the judges and the audience with direct access to their knowledges and opinions. In the following, I explore how the competing claims of Fosen Vind and Fovsen Njaarke are supported by different epistemologies, but also by conflicting views on “the state of the art” within the environmental sciences – the knowledge system that dominates the assessment scheme and state decision-making.

4.1.1 Corporate commissioned EIAs and research

In their closing argument on the last day in court, Fosen Vind argued that Fovsen Njaarke can still use their winter pastures at Storheia and Roan. As stated by their lawyers:

No studies show that reindeer stop using an area because of wind energy or power lines (…) Research show that reindeer are afraid of humans, and not infrastructure itself (…) Reindeer are steered by hunger which is stronger than their fear (...) Reindeer will adapt (…) Reindeer herders can make sure the reindeer use the pastures inside the wind turbine sites.

The research and expert opinions they presented to support this claim, mainly derive from the EIAs they had commissioned for the license permitting process between 2008–2011. In line with Norwegian regulation,⁶⁸ they could freely choose their consultants and hired a firm whose researchers had led two large research projects on impacts on reindeer from wind energy (VindRein, 2005) and power lines (KraftRein, 2007).⁶⁹ Published articles and a final report from these projects, mainly funded by the energy industry, conclude that it is human activity that disturbs the reindeer, and not the infrastructure itself.⁷⁰ These findings, they proclaimed, challenge prevailing assumptions regarding encroachments and impacts on reindeer, as they conclude that reindeer are disturbed during the construction phase, but do not avoid power lines and wind turbines in operation.

In 2013, OED gave a final license to Fosen Vind based on the EIAs the company had commissioned, as well as on ongoing studies by the same researchers. In its decision, the Ministry argued that the benefits of renewable energy production outweigh the disadvantages this may have for reindeer herding.⁷¹ By requiring Fosen Vind to compensate for the increased workload and infrastructure needed, the projects would not threaten the future existence of reindeer herding, nor violate the Fovsen Saami’s right to “enjoy their culture” as established by article 27 of the ICCPR. Further, the Ministry recognized that research on impacts from wind energy on reindeer herding is scarce, but that ongoing studies and observations indicate that impacts may be less severe than initially feared. One of the main premises for approving the license was that Storheia and Roan could still be used as winter pastures and thus coexist with the wind energy infrastructure in the operation phase.⁷²

4.1.2 Aerpiedaajroe and aerpiemaahtoe: The knowledge, practices, and experiences of reindeer herders

Back in the courtroom, Fosen Vind claimed that OED’s decision is well-founded, while Fovsen Njaarke argued that it is based on erroneous factual grounds. Fovsen Njaarke’s lawyers asserted that the company commissioned EIAs are superficial, ignore the knowledges and concerns of reindeer herders, and fail to assess the cumulative impacts on reindeer herding landscapes from other encroachments. Further, they argued that the reindeer herders’ own experiences and observations of severe impacts have been confirmed by research in Sweden and GPS data from an ongoing research project at Roan. This, they argued, indicates that Storheia and Roan have to be considered lost as winter pastures, consequently threatening the future existence of Saami reindeer herding at Fovsen.

The Saami reindeer herders from Fovsen Njaarke are local ecological experts,⁷³ and provided the court with aerpiedaajroe and aerpiemaahtoe, which can be explained as theoretical and practical knowledges deeply rooted in Saami culture and worldview.⁷⁴ Aerpie means inheritance, while daajroe⁷⁵ and maahtoe⁷⁶ refer to the knowledges passed on and accumulated over generations. In court, Fovsen Njaarke described how important the pasture lands are to them, how they use them, the impacts they have already seen from wind energy and other encroachments, and how climate change is an additional challenge. In his testimony, Laara, from the South Sïjte, explained that the few animals he has seen near Storheia “act in a strange way” and that these animals predominantly comprised of less shy bulls accompanied by a few females without calves. Fovsen Njaarke also called on other reindeer herders to share their experiences of impacts. Marja, a reindeer herder from a community impacted by wind energy infrastructure in Sweden, narrated how the situation had turned chaotic and the herd had spread in different directions as they tried to actively herd them past the turbine site. She affirmed that the reindeer avoid the sight and sound of the wind turbines, and that they do not show any signs of adapting.

During breaks from the formal procedures, the herders from Fovsen Njaarke expressed that their knowledges and observations are difficult to explain outside of a practical context and to people who lack an understanding of reindeer herding in general. When asked by the Fosen Vind lawyer about their ability to control and keep the reindeer within a desired area, Toamma from the North Siida answered: “The reindeer tend to move according to the weather and the wind”. This answer is perhaps the most precise way for a reindeer herder to explain the dynamics between the herders, animals, and the landscape. There is an old Northern Saami proverb that aptly illustrates how the nomadic use of the Saami reindeer herding landscapes cannot be reduced to a rigid and square pattern: “Jahki ii leat jagi viellja”,⁷⁷ no year is the other year’s brother. As climate conditions are changing faster than ever, the need for flexibility will be even more imporant in the future. Fovsen Njaarke’s argument that access to the winter pastures at Roan and Storheia is crucial because these pastures are always free of snow and ice, is an illustrative example.⁷⁸

When the same lawyer asked Toamma where his reindeer could be found right now, the question seemed to be perceived as a mere provocation supporting the repeated argument that herders should be able to control their animals within the wind turbine site. At this point, Meerke, a young reindeer owner from Fovsen Njaarke who was awaiting her turn to testify, loudly exclaimed from the audience bench in the back of the courtroom: “How should we know, we have to be here [in court]!”. According to the Norwegian court’s code of conduct observers are not allowed to engage in any form of communication or activity that disrupts the formal hearings.⁷⁹ The silent response and lack of rebuke by the judges, however, could be understood as some kind of recognition of authority in her abrupt statement. It was also a reminder that many reindeer herders spend numerous hours addressing legal and bureaucratic processes, while being deprived of crucial time to herd their reindeer. This burden translates into fatigue, and paradoxically prevents reindeer herders from engaging in reindeer herding activities and transferring ancestral knowledges to the younger generations. As such, defending Saami reindeer herding culture through long-during legal processes can be considered as a threat to the aim itself.

4.1.3 Contested EIAs and research

Explaining reindeer herding knowledges to decision-makers in a context where “Western” sciences and perceptions of Saami land-use predominate, is a challenge identified in other struggles over industrial development and state management of the environment and natural resources in Saepmie.⁸⁰ Since the first District Court cases in 2017 and 2018, the South Sïjte had thus commissioned several expert reports about the importance of Storheia and the cumulative impacts from all encroachments on their reindeer herding lands. In contrast to the research and EIAs carried out by the Fosen Vind consultants, these “shadow reports”⁸¹ were written by Saami ecological experts and natural and environmental scientists, and were thus based on both aerpiedaajroe/aerpiemaahtoe and science. Altogether, the reports and the expert witnesses who presented them in court concluded that Fovsen Njaarke’s pastures are lost, and that the cumulative impacts will threaten the future existence of reindeer herding at Fovsen.

Similarly, Fosen Vind had commissioned updated reports from the same consultants they had used in the licensing process. While these consultants agree that flexible rotation and access to Storheia and Roan are crucial for the sustainable use of Fovsen Njaarke’s winter pastures in the future, they disagree on how severe the impacts will be, and whether the future existence of reindeer herding at Fosen is actually threatened or not. In the reports presented to the Court, they acknowledge that the available research indicates some change in reindeers’ land-use, but still note that “the impacts from wind energy on reindeer herding may not be as severe as previously feared,”⁸² and that “it is possible the pessimism among reindeer herders is unnecessarily great.”⁸³ In his testimony, one of the consultants hesitated to conclude on the cause-effect relationship between the reindeer avoiding the pastures and the infrastructure itself, assuming that the reindeer have a strong motivation to access available pastures despite their potential fear of the turbines.

During their cross-examination of the same consultant, Fovsen Njaarke’s lawyers challenged him to comment on research which found clear avoidance patterns, including an ongoing study in Rákkočearru in northern Norway, led by himself. Although recognizing that the impacted reindeer herding community had stated that avoidance up to 10 kilometers from the turbine site is a direct consequence of the project, he responded that more GPS data is necessary to rule out other causes and natural fluctuations of reindeers’ land-use. When asked if he thinks it is possible for reindeer to pasture inside a wind turbine site, he answered:

It is entirely possible (…). I would say under most conditions if the reindeer have used the pastures before. If there are disturbances, they might avoid at first, but then adapt over time. Like us humans. They understand it is not as dangerous as they thought. I do not see any reason for the reindeer not wanting to use an area where there is good pasture.

When asked whether future reindeer herding is threatened, he first hesitated to respond, but eventually said that: “I think that the issue of threatened existence has to do with reindeer herders not liking an area and not because it is a threat to reindeer as such. The reindeer herders have to account for this.”

4.1.4 A question of method(ology)

It was crucial for the court to clarify the disagreement between the two research groups called by the parties as expert witnesses, as these researchers have carried out most of the available studies on impacts from wind energy infrastructure on reindeer herding in Norway and Sweden. The report “Wind energy and reindeer – a knowledge synthesis”⁸⁴ addresses the ongoing knowledge controversy between them and was frequently referenced during the court hearings. The report juxtaposes available studies on the impacts from wind energy and power lines respectively, accounting for the different methods, scope and limitations that can explain the diverging results. However, as the report does not conclude on whose research design is more accurate, the disagreement between them continued to unfold in court. For example, Fovsen Njaarke’s consultants claimed that the studies carried out by the Fosen Vind consultants are invalid as they were carried out on a local scale and ignored the reindeer that were already avoiding the area. The Fosen Vind consultant, on the other hand, claimed that studies carried out on a large scale fail to exclude other variables which may cause avoidance.

Beyond differences in research methods an techniques, what becomes apparent when listening to their testimonies and from reading their studies and reports, is how the two research groups have substantially different methodological approaches to reindeer herders’ knowledges and experiences with wind energy. In the studies and EIAs presented to the court, only Fovsen Njaarke’s consultants included in-depth interviews with impacted reindeer herding communities, recognizing their knowledge as equally valid. Environmental decision-making in Norway increasingly requires the inclusion of Saami knowledges. For instance, the Norwegian Biodiversity Act⁸⁵ says that authorities must base their decisions on both science and knowledge “based on many generations of experience acquired through the use of and interaction with the natural environment, including traditional Saami use.” In the consideration of a potential violation of article 27 of the ICCPR it was also relevant for the parties to discuss to what degree Saami reindeer herding knowledge had been included in the licensing process. In court, the Fosen Vind lawyer and consultant both argued that collaboration with the reindeer herders in the EIA process had been good, but the response from Toamma from the North Siida revealed the contrary. He exclaimed: “Collaboration? No, I do not recall any other collaboration than making the animals available to them. The [GPS] marking began with them doubting whether we have actually made use of the areas we claim.”

Reindeer herders from other communities were also called by Fovsen Njaarke to testify and give their opinions on research practices and results of studies carried out by the Fosen Vind consultants in their areas. They expressed how the researchers had ignored their knowledges and reached conclusions contrary to what reindeer herders observe and communicate. Issát, a reindeer herder from Rákkočearru, a study mentioned above, seemed annoyed when he explained how the researcher hesitated to conclude that reindeer avoid wind turbines.

[the researcher] tried to explain away our interpretations of the results, but we disagreed. I maintain that reindeer avoid everything that moves (…) Nobody can come and explain to me how reindeer herding works after only three days in the field. That is how it is with all impact assessments. They [consultants] stay there a short time, and claim they know more about reindeer herding than us.

In a research article about the knowledge status of impacts on reindeer herding from wind energy infrastructure, the same research group that Fosen Vind used as consultants explicitly discredits the knowledge Saami reindeer herders hold. In doing so, they affirm a positivist postion as neutral scientists while warning about the subjective role of reindeer herders in knowledge production. In a concluding paragraph they write that “there are challenges in using intervju data from reindeer herders, because they are often a party in ongoing conflicts of interests where wind energy is built or planned (…) intervju based information should be combined with objective data for reindeer land-use (GPS)” and analyzed “with a neutral set of data”.⁸⁶

4.1.5 Ignorance as a strategy?

The testimonies from reindeer herders and the statements from the Fosen Vind consultants above illustrate how Indigenous knowledge is devalued and even dismissed as biased by researchers who largely influence decision-making. During the court hearings, I observed how Fosen Vind seemed to take advantage of such a positivist stance, and how they also constructed doubt about all knowledge production that was critical towards wind energy development on Saami reindeer herding lands. As argued by Fovsen Njaarke’s lawyers, Fosen Vind has trivialized the impacts observed by reindeer herders and relied on knowledge produced by consultants who adapted the EIAs in favor of the priorities of the license authorities. In the licensing process, the same consultants had changed their conclusions from the first EIA in 2008 to the second and third EIAs in 2009 and 2011. This happened after the Norwegian Directorate for Water and Energy (NVE) had already prioritized and given a final permit to the Storheia and Roan projects. After first warning against construction of these projects, the consultants concluded that they no longer constitute a threat to the future existence of reindeer herding, noting that they had not conducted any new assessments of the projects. To support this claim, Fovsen Njaarke’s lawyers read out loud from a published critique from another scientist who warned against researchers who become “merchants of doubt” when they present the current knowledge status as uncertain and diverging, leaving decision makers and courts confused or with the impression that reindeer herders exaggerate.⁸⁷ This concern was also reflected in a letter from the County Governor in Trøndelag that was presented to the court. The letter stresses how a lack of trust from reindeer herders in EIA processes is a serious problem in Norway, as developers are free to choose consultants who may favor their development plans.

I furthermore observed how doubt was actively produced by Fosen Vind in the courtroom through the use of visual images. Even though Fovsen Njaarke repeated that the few animals who seem less afraid of turbines and other infrastructure are a few bulls that constitute only fifteen percent of the entire herd, the lawyers of Fosen Vind projected pictures and videos of reindeer lying and pasturing close to the wind turbines. The presentation of visual images, supported by what Kirsch terms corporate science,⁸⁸ the kind of research and expert opinions that companies rely on to indicate that impacts are less severe, left the impression that reindeer do not mind the wind energy infrastructure. As such it represent what Proctor⁸⁹ refers to as ignorance as a strategic ploy. Here, ignorance or what is “not known” is understood, not as something neutral, but as doubt, uncertainty or misinformation that is actively constructed to protect capitalist⁹⁰ and colonial interests.⁹¹ The controversy taking place in the courtroom then, not only concerns knowledge gaps or friction between different knowledge systems, but also strategic ignorance of all knowledges supporting the reindeer herders’ claims.

Another crucial question disputed by the parties in the courtroom was how much knowledge is needed to support a claim and how to deal with uncertainty. In their closing statement, Fovsen Njaarke’s lawyers argued that there is enough available research indicating that the winter pastures will be lost because of the projects, and they stressed that reindeer herders’ knowledges have to be emphasized in research and decision-making processes. In case of any doubt regarding severe impacts, they argued that the Court should apply a precautionary principle as OED had done when they rejected a license permit for a wind energy project in Gaelpie in 2016, with special considerations for the already vulnerable Southern Saami language and culture.⁹² Fosen Vind, on the other hand, argued that the available research is unclear and that reindeer herders should carry the burden of proof when they claim that wind energy prevents reindeer herding from continuing.

4.2 Impacts on Saami land-use, landscapes, and relations: Worlds apart?

At Fosen, reindeer herding is the only Saami practice that provides an environment where we can meet. Reindeer herding is our core, and the very foundation of the Southern Saami language and traditions. Having taken part in this culture (…) I am glad to have received values of how to think about nature and share, not only exploiting from it. We look after each other and we have respect for the lands that have traces of history, hold memories of the past, and also hope for the future.⁹³

The testimony above from Meerke, a young reindeer owner from the South Sïjte, illustrates how important reindeer herding and the landscapes in which it is practiced are for the Southern Saami culture at Fosen. While the logic of the case mainly evolved around financial and metric schemes to calculate compensation for loss in terms of meat production, Meerke highlights values embedded in the relationship between humans, reindeer, and the landscape. While Fosen Vind and their expert witnesses reduce the distinction between impacts on reindeer and Saami herding practices to a matter of “being willing to adapt” or “reindeer herders not liking an area,” Meerke considers losing the lands as equivalent to losing what is integral to her very existence, a sentiment expressed by Saami reindeer herders in struggles against wind energy infrastructure elsewhere.⁹⁴ As she explicitly told the Court: “To me, reindeer herding is the most important identity marker. If I cannot continue, I would struggle to know who I am.”

Critical geographers encourage us to look into the landscape as a framework for addressing basic human rights, justice and well-being, by integrating spiritual and cultural values to the analysis.⁹⁵ Decolonial approaches to geography need to be “rooted and routed in the places and genealogies we inhabit”,⁹⁶ in this case the Southern Saami landscapes. Beyond the experience of material loss and disrupted access to pastures for the animals, Meerke expresses relational values which reflect practical, cultural, and ideological aspects of Saami livelihoods and worldviews.⁹⁷ The integral and reciprocal care between humans, non-humans and the lands can be understood as taking place within a “Saami cultural landscape”.⁹⁸ Although dynamic in time and space, this landscape contains intangible knowledges and herding practices which carry memories of ancestral use and has an identity strengthening meaning to those who relate to it.⁹⁹ In Northern Saami, this landscape can be conceptualized as meahcci, equivalent to miehtjiesdajve in the Southern Saami language, and is characterized by “practical places, uncertain but productive social relations with lively and morally sensible human and non-human beings.”¹⁰⁰ In this landscape, there is no distinction between nature and culture, just as impacts on reindeer and Saami herders are inseparable from each other.

Meerke’s testimony further contrasts with the claim made by Fosen Vind that reindeer herders have an obligation to adapt to the needs of society, as stated in the Expropriation Law. According to her, Saami reindeer herders have instead an obligation to take care of the landscape, by not exploiting it. Although Fosen Vind argued that impacts are less severe, they maintained the paternalistic mindset that reindeer herders have a duty to “sacrifice their attachment to place for the greater good of a nation-state.”¹⁰¹ In the context of wind energy development, this colonial argument is framed as a global common good, as it builds on the premise that reindeer herders need to make some sacrifices to save the planet.¹⁰² However, as expressed by the Saami Council,¹⁰³ this moral imperative is embedded in a green colonial paradox: Saami lands are being exploited “by what the Nordic peoples define as ‘green energy’”, while “Saami livelihoods – including reindeer herding – are among the ‘greenest’ there are”.

During the court hearings, Fosen Vind further argued that Saami reindeer herding has already adapted to technological innovations, and that Saami culture therefore is far from being threatened by the mitigation measures they propose. This is similar to what has been stated by wind energy developers who dispossess Saami reindeer herding lands elsewhere.¹⁰⁴ The green colonial underpinnings of Fosen Vind’s arguments came to the fore in the closing statement of their lawyer:

All parts of society develop, and we must work together to make it work. Technological development affects reindeer herding. It is not a question of maintaining a culture from 100 years ago. They have adapted by using drones, snowmobiles, helicopters, etc. today. The state demands more renewable energy to be produced, which is important for the society. From our perspective, it is totally unlikely that reindeer herding will disappear because of the wind energy plans.

4.2.1 Mitigation measures and impacts on Saami reindeer herding culture

According to Fovsen Njaarke, lack of access to the Roan and Storheia pastures will eventually force them to reduce the herd. As a consequence, they fear that at least one family from each Sïjte/Siida will be pushed out of reindeer herding. This will have implications for the ability to conduct the collective work required to maintain the herd, consequently affecting the remaining families’ ability to continue. The only measure which can secure the survival of the reindeer is to compensate for lost winter pastures with artificial feeding, a “necessary evil” which pushes “the question of what ‘Sami reindeer herding’ actually is (…) to its limit”.¹⁰⁵ As expressed by Læjsa, a young reindeer owner from the North Siida during the court hearing: “It is difficult for me to suggest this, because it is not something we want to do. It is not traditional reindeer herding”.

It is important to stress that permanent artificial feeding differs from supplementary feeding, because it requires extensive and enclosed infrastructure, different knowledges and expertise, and increases the risks of spreading disease and morbidity among reindeer that are used to free pastures and mobility.¹⁰⁶ Marja, a reindeer herder from Sweden, testified how it also effects the well-being of herders who see their animals suffer: “It is difficult for a reindeer herder to see reindeer die at such a close range (…) It is a trauma (...) This is not the kind of reindeer herding you want to practice. You want them to pasture freely”. Protect Sápmi, the Saami consultancy firm that elaborated a cumulative impact assessment for the Storheia project, also calculated the costs of introducing extensive artificial feeding. The consultant, an economist and a reindeer herder himself, emphasized that it is an emergency solution which forces herders to domesticate free ranging reindeer:

You must think like a farmer and build a barn (…) It is not desirable. As an old reindeer owner once said: “If I have to start feeding the reindeer, instead of it feeding me, I will quit reindeer herding.”

Beyond knowledge controversies over “facts”, the competing claims revealed conflicting perceptions of what constitutes Southern Saami reindeer herding and culture. Fosen Vind were only concerned about calculating how much pasture was lost to the extent this would affect the value deriving from meat production. State governance of Saami reindeer herding in general reflects such positivist-reductionist presumptions characterized by generalizations, rationalizations and simplifications of Saami reindeer herding, as well as a limited understanding of “sustainability”.¹⁰⁷ As such, Fosen Vind’s arguments stood in stark contrast to how Fovsen Njaarke valued their relationship with the reindeer and the landscape. Although the court case concerned Saami cultural rights as conceptualized in international human rights conventions, the disagreement between the parties points towards what Blaser¹⁰⁸ instead prefers to call world-making or “worlding”. Here ontological difference is understood, not as cultural perspectives on the same reality, but rather as a recognition of multiple realities. When these conflicts are entangled in struggles over lands and resources, they become political ontologies.¹⁰⁹ Fovsen Njaarke’s claims to protect their Southern Saami “culture” can thus be understood as an “ontological interruption to western presumptions”¹¹⁰ of what is at stake, in this case, the future existence of Saami knowledges, practices, and landscapes. In this world-making, Saami reindeer herders and animals relate to each other with mutual respect.¹¹¹

4.3 The verdicts: Implications for Fovsen Njaarke and beyond

Based on the competing claims of Fovsen Njaarke and Fosen Vind, the role of the Court was to resolve the conflict. But whose “truth” did it recognize and what are the implications for Fovsen Njaarke and beyond? The Court of Appeal reached its verdict on 8 June 2020. Contrary to OED and the District Court, the verdict stated that “there is a solid scientific foundation for claiming that reindeer avoid wind energy plants when they have alternative pastures at hand.”¹¹² The decision mainly builds on the testimony and research of one of the expert biologists called by Fovsen Njaarke, but recognized that testimonies from reindeer herders support this conclusion. The verdict is not clear however, on whether this conclusion relies more on aerpiedaajroe/aerpiemaahtoe than science, or if scientific research was required to confirm the knowledges and experiences of reindeer herders. By saying that the “conclusion is relatively open regarding the impacts from wind energy infrastructure”¹¹³ the Court of Appeal to some degree hesitated to engage in the disagreement between the two research groups and did not address the question of what constitutes quality or non-biased research.

Contrary to Fovsen Njaarke’s claim, the verdict further agrees with Fosen Vind that the potential impacts were responsibly assessed based on the knowledge available to the license authorities in 2013. Similar to court decisions in wind energy conflicts in Sweden¹¹⁴ the Court of Appeal considered the argument of the “green transition” as legitimate when balancing conflicting interest with Saami reindeer herding.¹¹⁵ It recognized that the current knowledge status indicates that the future of reindeer herding is threatened at Fovsen, consequently violating article 27 of the ICCPR, but concluded that artificial feeding will mitigate the human rights violation. Admittedly under doubt, it concludes that the “main features” of Saami culture will remain intact, and that knowledge of reindeer herding can be transferred to the next generation.¹¹⁶

Compared to a more thorough assessment of the knowledge controversy over “facts”, the Court of Appeal did not refer to any expert opinion and only used its own discretion to define what constitutes significant impacts on the Southern Saami reindeer herding culture. In doing so, the verdict fails to recognize the aerpiedaajroe and aerpiemaahtoe embedded in the ancestral use of the free and natural winter pastures at Storheia and Roan. By deeming it satisfactory to compensate for the lost winter pastures with artificial feeding, the verdict further denies that the Storheia and Roan pastures are part of a Saami landscape with a relational value of their own. As expressed by Maja Kristine Jåma from Fovsen Njaarke after the verdict was passed: “the value of reindeer herding culture we no longer can pursue cannot be replaced with money”.¹¹⁷ In one paragraph, the Court of Appeal reasons that reindeer herding never has been static and that winter feeding has been introduced by reindeer herders elsewhere. The latter argument, however, ignores that climate change, predators and loss of pasture to multiple industries and infrastructure are among the main reasons reindeer herders have been forced to implement supplementary feeding.¹¹⁸ The verdict does not make a distinction between extensive artificial and supplementary feeding nor between technological adaptations which have been internally adapted and externally imposed. In doing so, the Court of Appeal fails to recognize Saami reindeer herders’ right to self-determination over their own cultural practices on the lands which historically belong to them.

4.4 A historical Supreme Court verdict and Norway’s green colonialism

By concluding that artificial feeding could mitigate the human rights violation, the Court of Appeal opted for an “in-between” solution to resolve the conflict. However, this made both parties appeal the verdict to the Supreme Court. While Fosen Vind considered the compensation issued to pay for artificial feeding was unnecessary and too high, Fovsen Njaarke insisted that the license still violates their right to practice reindeer herding according to their culture. In this case, this means to continue to use the free and natural winter pastures at Roan and Storheia. During the Supreme Court hearing, the state attorney intervened as a third party, arguing that the case was of interest to the state as the license authority. The state attorney did not only support Fosen Vind’s claim that the license was in line with the Norwegian Human Rights Law, but also plead that Fovsen Njaarke as a collective was the wrong legal subject to evoke article 27 of the ICCPR. The appeal left the Supreme Court to decide whose truth it considered more just: The moral green colonial imperative and coexistence narrative of Fosen Vind and the Norwegian state, the self-determined world-making of Fovsen Njaarke, or the emergency feeding solution issued by the Court of Appeal.

The Supreme Court’s final decision represents a historical verdict in the Norwegian-Saami context. On 11 October 2021, eleven judges in the Grand Chamber unanimously ruled in favor of Fovsen Njaarke, rendering the license invalid due to the violation of article 27 of the ICCPR. For the first time, the Supreme Court came to the conclusion that industrial encroachments on Saami reindeer herding lands in Norway constitute a human rights violation. The verdict decisively contradicts the Court of Appeal on the compensation measure: Artificial feeding differs significantly from traditional nomadic reindeer herding and has not been “given a broad and thorough assessment, and general reindeer husbandry interests have not been heard”.¹¹⁹ The verdict further established that the Saami reindeer herders’ right to enjoy their culture is absolute and that a minority’s interest cannot be balanced against the interests of the majority society, particularly emphasizing that the interest of a “green transition” could have been maintained through options less intrusive to Saami reindeer herding.¹²⁰

Although the Supreme Court recognized Fovsen Njaarke’s human rights claim, the construction of 151 wind turbines, 130 km of roads and connected infrastructure had already destroyed crucial winter pastures and the Saami landscape. In the wake of the Supreme Court verdict, Fovsen Njaarke demanded a removal of all infrastructure and restoration of the pastures.¹²¹ However instead, OED called for further impact assessments aiming to enable coexistence¹²² – a common premise and argument used by industries to legitimize material disposession and fragmentation of Saami reindeer herding landscapes throughout Saepmie.¹²³ Fosen Vind and Roan Vind announced that they support further assessment of mitigation measures which can repeal the human rights violation,¹²⁴ while applying for a new license permit.¹²⁵ In particular, they proposed an assessment of current experiences with mitigation by feeding.¹²⁶ OED consulted the Saami Parliament and Fovsen Njaarke on the proposed impact assessment program. However, the Ministry ignored demands to assess how the winter pastures could be returned and restored, and instead proposed to reassess what had already been considered by the Supreme Court. The lack of respect for the knowledge and opinions of the winning party of the trial resulted in a withdrawl from the process by both the Saami Parliament and Fovsen Njaarke. In a letter to the Ministry, the lawyers of both the North Siida and the South Sïjte jointly express: “The proposal gives an impression that the government lacks genuine will to implement the Supreme Court verdict, and is directly at odds with the government’s statements that it will listen to the Siidas, and to have a trustful dialogue”.¹²⁷

The lack of implementation of the Supreme Court verdict has stirred mass mobilizations and protests. On 23 February 2023, exactly five hundred days after the Supreme Court verdict was announced, the youth branches of the National Norwegian Saami Association (NSR Nuorat) and Friends of the Earth (Natur og Ungdom) peacefully occupied the offices of OED, followed by a week-long blockade of the entrances of several ministries. They announced they would “close the State” through civil disobedience until the prime minister apologizes to Fovsen Njaarke and recognizes that the human rights violation is ongoing. They demanded that the State take immediate action to restore and return Roan and Storheia to Fovsen Njaarke.¹²⁸

In a statement held at the UN Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues in New York a few months later, Saami youth organizations denounced the land grabs the Nordic states have made in the name of the green transition, in Fosen and elsewhere in Saepmie: “It is just Nordic colonialism hiding behind a new kind of mask.”¹²⁹ Their critique frames how the epistemic controversies addressed in this article are linked to Norway’s colonial interests. Through Statkraft and Aneo, the Norwegian State owns 60% of the projects. OED’s authorization of a pre-approval for construction before Fovsen Njaarke was able to legally try the validity of the licenses in 2016; its disregard of CERD’s request to temporary halt construction at Storheia in 2018; and finally, the state attorney’s support for Fosen Vind in the Supreme Court, all show how the Norwegian state has willfully defended its green colonial dispossessions in Saepmie. As further evidence of this power asymmetry, it is the same state that will decide how the Supreme Court verdict will be implemented. The assumption that new impact assessments and “dialogue” will result in a solution where Saami reindeer herding and wind energy infrastructure can coexist, ressonates with the “subtle”,¹³⁰ “quiet, soft-spoken…understated, polite and bureaucratic”¹³¹ maneuvers which characterize and legitimize contemporary Nordic-Saami colonialism. As late Saami artist and poet Nils Aslak Välkepää¹³² eloquently stated: “really highly advanced states carry out genocide without blood, without physical violence”. In this case, by destroying Saami landscapes, ways of knowing and being in the name of the so-called green transition.

5 Closing argument

Following court procedure, I will end this article with a “closing argument”. Through a ethnographic and decolonial lens, I have invited you inside the walls of the courtroom to “witness” epistemic controversies and contestations over impacts from wind energy infrastructure on Southern Saami reindeer herding, culture, and landscapes. The courtroom is certainly a space where asymmetrical power relations and dynamics leave marginal room for Indigenous self-determination and epistemic justice. However, the Fosen case also illustrates how Indigenous peoples can contest dominant knowledge regimes and colonial presumptions about their livelihoods, culture, and rights.

Previous research on land-use struggles in Saepmie has focused on how Indigenous knowledges and worldviews are marginalized in planning and decision-making processes, as this article has addressed in the context of the courtroom. Impacts from the wind energy infrastructure on reindeer dominated the logic of the court hearings, wether based on aerpiedaajroe/aerpiemaahtoe or on natural and environmental science. Paradoxically, less attention was given to impacts on reindeer herding as integral to Southern Saami culture – the defining legal premise of the court case. However, beyond onto-epistemological differences between “Indigenous” and “Western” ways of knowing and being in the landscape, the findings clearly show that Fosen Vind produced doubt about all knowledge which threatened their commercial interests. This strategic ignorance was willfully reproduced by the Norwegian state in the aftermath of the Supreme Court verdict, as new bureaucratic processes and assessments of impacts and mitigation measures were sought to enforce coexistence.

As long as EIA processes are industry-led and solely based on environmental sciences, Saami reindeer herders will continue to lack trust in consultants and licensing processes which exclude them from being experts on their own livelihoods and culture – or world-making as Blaser¹³³ would prefer to call it. To improve the quality and legitimacy in decision-making processes, there is a need for an integral approach, including assessments of social impacts, such as on economy, health, well-being, and Saami culture.¹³⁴ Joks & Law¹³⁵ have suggested that in order to work less destructively across colonial difference, there is a need “to ‘soften’ the realisms of biology and ‘harden’ the contextual knowledges” and “nomadic practices of Saami experts”. Yet, the findings from this article show that winning knowledge struggles is not necessarily enough, as ignorance may be strategically produced to legitimate capitalist and colonial interests. The Norwegian state’s reluctancy to respect the outcome of it’s own legal system reveals that asymmetric power relations continue to pave the way for colonial dispossession of Saami landscapes, epistemes, and human rights in the green energy transition.

Acknowledgments

I would like to extend my recognition to Fovsen Njaarke for their knowledge and yearslong struggles to maintain Southern Saami reindeer herding and its cultural landscape – Jijnjh gæjhtoe. I also thank Susanne Normann for the collaboration, colleagues at the Centre for Sámi Studies at UiT The Arctic University of Norway for valuable insights and support, and the anonymous reviewers for constructive comments and suggestions for improving the manuscript. The study is funded by the Norwegian Research Council through the project “TriArc – The Arctic governance triangle: government, Indigenous peoples and industry in change”. Thank you also to the Lásságámmi Foundation for offering me an inspiring writing residency at Lásságámmi – the home of Áillohaš (Nils Aslak Valkepää) and his art.

The publication charges for this article have been funded by a grant from UiT The Arctic University of Norway’s publication fund.

NOTES

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2. The Southern Saami homelands stretch across the colonial borders of Sweden and Norway.
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13. Kårtveit, “Green Colonialism: The Story of Wind Power in Sápmi”.
14. Saami Council, Tråante Declaration (Tråante, 2017). https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5dfb35a66f00d54ab0729b75/t/5e722293aee185235a084d70/1584538266490/TRÅANTE_DECLARATION_english.pdf (accessed November 3, 2020).
15. Eva Maria Fjellheim, Florian Carl and Susanne Normann. “‘Green’ Colonialism Is Ruining Indigenous Lives in Norway.” Al Jazeera, August 1, 2020. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/8/1/green-colonialism-is-ruining-indigenous-lives-in-norway#:~:text=Norway%20continues%20to%20allow%20the,which%20threatens%20their%20herding%20livelihoods.&text=Eva%20Maria%20Fjellheim%20is%20a,the%20Arctic%20University%20of%20Norway; Eva Tryti, “Grønn Kolonisering.” Klassekampen, June 6, 2021 https://klassekampen.no/utgave/2021-07-02/gronn-kolonisering/bXfL (accessed March 8, 2022).
16. Fjellheim, “You Can Kill Us with Dialogue”; Kuokkanen, “Is Reindeer the New Buffalo?”; Lawrence, “Internal Colonisation and Indigenous Resource Sovereignty”; Normann, “Green Colonialism in the Nordic Context”; Össbo, “Back to Square One”.
17. R. K. Pachauri and L. A. Meyer, Ipcc: Climate Change: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, Ii and Iii to the Fifth Assessment IPCC (2014).
18. Gunn-Britt Retter, Susanna Israelsson and Tonje M. Winsnes, Climate Change in Sápmi – an overview and a Path Forward (Saami Council 2023). https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5dfb35a66f00d54ab0729b75/t/6436b8105bfc4f6b09b76f36/1681307700687/Sámi+Climate+Report-12042023.pdf
19. Tor-Arve Benjaminsen et al., “Misreading the Arctic Landscape: A Political Ecology of Reindeer, Carrying Capacities, and Overstocking in Finnmark, Norway.” Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift-Norwegian Journal of Geography 69, no. 4 (2015): 219–29. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00291951.2015.1031274; Fjellheim, “You Can Kill Us with Dialogue”; Katrine I. Johnsen, Svein D. Mathiesen, and Inger Marie G. Eira, “Sámi Reindeer Governance in Norway as Competing Knowledge Systems.” Ecology and Society 22, no. 4 (2017). https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-09786-220433; Solveig Joks and John Law, “Sámi Salmon, State Salmon: Tek, Technoscience and Care.” The Sociological Review 65, no. 2 (2017): 150–71. https://doi.org/10.1177/0081176917710428; Rebecca Lawrence and Rasmus K. Larsen, “The politics of planning: assessing the impacts of mining on Sami lands.” Third World Quarterly 38 (2017): 1164–1180. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2016.1257909; Normann, “Green Colonialism in the Nordic Context”; Kajsa Raitio, Christina Allard and Rebecca Lawrence, “Mineral Extraction in Swedish Sápmi: The Regulatory Gap between Sami Rights and Sweden’s Mining Permitting Practices.” Land use policy 99 (2020): 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.105001.
20. Mariel Aguilar-Støen and Cecilie Hirsch, “Environmental Impact Assessments, Local Power and Self-Determination: The Case of Mining and Hydropower Development in Guatemala.” The Extractive Industries and Society 2, no. 3 (2015): 472–79. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2015.03.001; Courtney Fidler, “Increasing the Sustainability of a Resource Development: Aboriginal Engagement and Negotiated Agreements”. Environment, Development and Sustainability 12, no. 2 (2010): 233–44; Ciaran O’faircheallaigh, “Environmental agreements, EIA follow-up and aboriginal participation in environmental management: The Canadian experience” Environmental Impact Assessment Review 27, no.4 (2007): 319–342. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eiar.2006.12.002; Dawn Hoogeveen, D, “Fish-hood: Environmental assessment, critical Indigenous studies, and posthumanism at Fish Lake (Teztan Biny), Tsilhqot’in territory.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 34 (2016): 355–370.
21. Halvor Dannevig and Brigt Dale, “The Nussir Case and the Battle for Legitimacy: Scientific Assessments, Defining Power and Political Contestation.” In The Will to Drill-Mining in Arctic Communites, eds. Brigt Dale, Ingrid Bay-Larsen and Berit Skorstad (Cham: Springer, 2018), 151–74; Einar Eythorsson and Alma E. Thuestad, “Incorporating Traditional Knowledge in Environmental Impact Assessment–How Can It Be Done?.” Arctic Review on Law and Politics 6, 2 (2015): 132–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.17585/arctic.v6.101; Lawrence and Larsen, “The politics of planning”; Raitio, Allard and Lawrence, “Mineral extraction in Swedish Sápmi”; Jan-Åge Riseth and Nikolai K. Winge, “Reindrift, Arealinngrep Og Utbygging: Blir Reindriften Hørt I Utbyggingssaker …?.” Reindriftsnytt (2015): 4–5.
22. Joks and Law, “Sámi Salmon, State Salmon”; John Law and Solveig Joks, “Indigeneity, Science and Difference: Notes on the Politics of How.” Science, Technology & Human Values 44, no. 3 (2019): 424–47. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243918793942
23. Benjaminsen et al., “Misreading the Arctic Landscape”; Johnsen, Mathiesen and Eira, “Sámi Reindeer Governance in Norway”.
24. Sarah A. Radcliffe, “Geography and Indigeneity II: Critical Geographies of Indigenous Bodily Politics.” Progress in Human Geography 42, no. 3 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132517691631.
25. Esben Leifsen et al., “New Mechanisms of Participation in Extractive Governance: Between Technologies of Governance and Resistance Work”. Third World Quarterly 38, no. 5 (2017): 1052. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2017.1302329
26. Johnsen, Mathiesen and Eira, “Sámi Reindeer Governance in Norway”; Larsen et al., “The impacts of mining on Sámi lands”; Lawrence and Larsen, “The politics of planning”; Raitio, Allard and Lawrence, “Mineral extraction in Swedish Sápmi”.
27. Lawrence and Larsen, “The politics of planning”.
28. Britt Kramvig and Dag Avango, “The Multiple Landscapes of Biedjovággi: Ontological Conflicts on Indigenous Land.” Polar Record 57, e35 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1017/S0032247421000139; Lawrence and Larsen, “The politics of planning”.
29. Rauna Kuokkanen, “Reconciliation as a Threat or Structural Change? The Truth and Reconciliation Process and Settler Colonial Policy Making in Finland.” Human Rights Review 21 (2020): 293–312; Lawrence, “Internal Colonisation and Indigenous Resource Sovereignty”; Rebecca Lawrence and Mattias Åhrén, “Mining as Colonisation: The Need for Restorative Justice and Restitution of Traditional Sami Lands.” In Nature, Temporality and Environmental Management. Scandinavian and Australian perspectives on peoples and landscapes. Eds. Lesley Heads et al. (London: Routledge, 2016), 149–66; Ragnhild Nilsson, “Att Bearkadidh. Om Samisk Självbestämmande Och Samisk Självkonstituering.” Doctoral dissertation, Stockholm University (2021).
30. Linsey McGoey, The Unknowers: How Strategic Ignorance Rules the World (London: Zed books, 2019); Robert N. Proctor, “Agnotology. A Missing Term to Describe the Cultural Production of Ignorance (and Its Study).” In Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance eds. Robert N. Proctor and Linda Schiebinger (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008).
31. Rebecca Lawrence and Ciaran O’faircheallaigh, “Rehabilitating Ranger Uranium Mine: Scientific Uncertainty, Deep Futures and the Production of Ignorance.” Environmental Politics 31, no. 1 (2022): 49–69. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2021.1923229.
32. Bjørg Evjen, Teemu Ryymin and Astri Andresen. Samenes Historie Fra 1751 Til 2010 Vol. 1 (Oslo: Cappelen Damm akademisk, 2021).
33. Eva Maria Fjellheim, “Through Our Stories We Resist: Decolonial Perspectives on South Saami History, Indigeneity and Rights.” In Indigenous Knowledges and the Sustainable Development Agenda, eds. Roy Krøvel and Anders Breidlid (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2020), 207–226.
34. Norges Offentlige Utredninger, NOU 2016:18 Hjertespråket — Forslag Til Lovverk, Tiltak Og Ordninger for Samiske Språk (2016:18). https://www.regjeringen.no/contentassets/ad82d773c3094582a2660908b48886d3/no/pdfs/nou201620160018000dddpdfs.pdf.
35. Anette Löf et al., “Unpacking Reindeer Husbandry Governance in Sweden, Norway and Finland. A Political Discursive Perspective.” In Reindeer Husbandry and Global Environmental Change. Pastoralism in Fennoscandia, ed. Tim Horstkotte et al., (London, England: Routledge, 2022), 150–172.
36. Landbruksdirektoratet, Ressursregnskap for Reindriftsnæringen 2019–2020. Reindriftsåret 1. April 2019–31. Mars 2020 (December 10, 2020).
37. Sverre Fjellheim, Kulturell Kompetanse og områdetilhørighet: Metoder, Prinsipper og Prosesser I Samisk Kulturminnevernarbeid (Snåsa: Saemien Sïjte, 1991).
38. Øyvind Ravna, Same- Og Reindriftsrett. Vol. 1, (Oslo: Gyldendal, 2019).
39. Fjellheim, “Through Our Stories We Resist”; Trond R. Nilssen, “South Saami Cultural Landscape under Pressure.” In The Indigenous Identity of the South Saami, eds. Håkon Hermanstrand et al. (Cham, Switzerland: Springer Open, 2019), 171–86; Katrina Rønningen and Frode Flemsæter, “Multifunctionality, Rural Diversification and the Unsettlement of Rural Land Use Systems.” In Routledge International Handbook of Rural Studies, eds. Mark Shucksmith and David L. Brown (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2016), 312–22.
40. Sannhets- og forsoningskommisjonen, Sannhet og forsoning – grunnlag for et oppgjør med fornorskningspolitikk og urett mot samer, kvener/norskfinner og skogfinner. Rapport til Stortinget fra Sannhets- og forsoningskommisjonen avgitt til Stortingets presidentskap 01.06.2023. Dokument 19 (2022–2023) (Oslo, 2023). https://www.stortinget.no/globalassets/pdf/sannhets--og-forsoningskommisjonen/rapport-til-stortinget-fra-sannhets--og-forsoningskommisjonen.pdf
41. Sïjte is Southern Saami and Siida is Northern Saami. It is unknown why the two family groups use the different terms.
42. In 2023 Trønder Energi changed its name to Aneo.
43. Nordic Wind Power is owned by EIP (Energy Infrastructure Partners) and BKW AG (Swiss energy producer), Talanx (insurance group), ELO (Finnish pension fund), and VWDA and WPV (German pension funds). https://www.fosenvind.no/om-fosen-vind/ (accessed May 11, 2023).
44. Aneo Vind Holding is owned by Aneo (51%) and Stadwercke München (49%).
45. Aneo, Fakta om “Fosen saken!”, February 28, 2023. https://www.aneo.com/om-oss/nyheter/fakta-om-fosen-saken/ (accessed April 10, 2023).
46. Øyvind Lie and Jannicke Nilsen, “Statkraft Dropper Vindkraft I Midt-Norge.” Teknisk Ukeblad, June 4, 2015. https://www.tu.no/artikler/statkraft-dropper-vindkraft-i-midt-norge/223929 (accessed March 5, 2022).
47. Pia P. Otte, Katrina Rønningen and Espen Moe, “Contested Wind Energy: Discourses on Energy Impacts and Their Significance for Energy Justice in Fosen”. In Energy, Resource Extraction and Society. Impacts and Contested Futures (London: Routledge), 140–58.
48. Statement by the Saami Parliament, made in a plenary assembly 4 March, 2016.
49. Saami Council, “Confound by Norway’s disrespect of CERD’s request in the Fosen case” (2018). https://www.saamicouncil.net/news-archive/confound-by-norways-disrespect-of-cerds-request-in-the-fosen-case (accessed December 18, 2018).
50. Dorothée, Cambou, “Uncovering Injustices in the Green Transition: Sámi Rights in the Development of Wind Energy in Sweden.” Arctic Review 11 (2020): 310–33. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48710635; Øyvind Ravna, “The Fosen Case and the Protection of Sámi Culture in Norway Pursuant to Article 27 Iccpr.” International Journal on Minority and Group Rights 1(aop) (2022): 1–20.
51. Samuel J. Spiegel, “Climate Injustice, Criminalisation of Land Protection and Anti-Colonial Solidarity: Courtroom Ethnography in an Age of Fossil Fuel Violence”. Political geography 84 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2020.102298; Jayme Walenta, “Courtroom Ethnography: Researching the Intersection of Law, Space, and Everyday Practices.” The Professional Geographer 72, no. 1 (2020): 131–38. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00330124.2019.1622427?needAccess=true.
52. Although the court hearings were open, no official recordings or transcriptions are available. I chose to anonymize all testimony, with special consideration for Fovsen Njaarke. Reindeer herders have experienced how fragments of their statements, e.g. to the media or to consultants, have been taken out of context and used against them on other occasions.
53. Rauna Kuokkanen, “Towards an “Indigenous Paradigm” from a Sami Perspective.” The Canadian Journal of Native Studies 20, no. 2 (2000): 411–36; Linda T. Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London: Zed Books Ltd., 2012).
54. I prefer to use the term “committed research” instead of “activist research” as it better articulates the need for a long-term commitment to the Indigenous communities with which the research is carried out.
55. Rebecca Lawrence and Kajsa Raitio, “Academia and Activism in Saami Research: Negotiating the Blurred Spaces Between.” In Ethics in Indigenous Research. Past Experiences–Future Challrnges, ed. Anna-Lill Drugge (Umeå: Umeå Universitet, Vaartoe–Centre for Sami research, 2016), 117–136; Torjer Olsen, “Responsibility, Reciprocity and Respect. On the Ethics of (Self-)Representation and Advocacy in Indigenous Studies.” In Ethics in Indigenous Research, 25–44.
56. Harald Gaski, “Indigenism and Cosmopolitanism: A Pan-Sami View of the Indigenous Perspective in Sami Culture and Research.” AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples 9, no. 2 (2013): 113–24. https://doi.org/10.1177/117718011300900201.
57. Bagele Chilisa, Indigenous Research Methodologies (Botswana: Sage Publications, 2011); Margaret Kovach, Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations, and Contexts (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010); Aileen Moreton-Robinson, “Relationality. A Key Presupposition of an Indigenous Social Research Paradigm.” In Sources and Methods in Indigenous Studies, eds. Chris Anderson and Jean M O’Brien (UK: Routledge, 2017), 69–77; Jelena Porsanger and Irja Seurujärvi-Kari, “Sámi Dutkama Máttut: The Forerunners of Sámi Methodological Thinking.” In Indigenous Research Methodologies in Sámi and Global Contexts eds. Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen, Pigga Keskitalo and Torjer Olsen (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2021), 33–64; Smith, “Decolonizing Methodologies”.
58. Drugge, Anna-Lill, “Ethics in Indigenous Research”.
59. Fjellheim, “You can kill us with dialogue”; Anette Löf and Marita Stinnerbom, “Making Collaboration Work – Reflections from Both Sides.” In Ethics in Indigenous Research, 137–156.
60. Kim TallBear, “Standing with and Speaking as Faith: A Feminist-Indigenous Approach to Inquiry.” Journal of Research Practice 10, 2 (2014).
61. Spiegel, “Climate Injustice”.
62. Eva Maria Fjellheim and Susanne Normann, “En merkedag i samisk rettshistorie: Hva nå?”. Adressa (Adressa.no). October 13, 2023. https://www.adressa.no/midtnorskdebatt/i/a7RRKL/deres-advokater-har-latterliggjort-og-banalisert-reindriftas-syn; Eva Maria Fjellheim, “Samisk folkeopprør mot en kolonistat”. Adressa (Adressa.no), March 2, 2023. https://www.adressa.no/midtnorskdebatt/i/15Wpwq/samisk-folkeopproer-mot-en-kolonistat#:~:text=40%20år%20etter%20Alta%2Dsaken,har%20ivaretatt%20landskapet%20i%20århundrer; Fjellheim, “Honourable Court”; Fjellheim, Carl and Normann, “‘Green’ Colonialism”.
63. Fjellheim, “Honourable Court”.
64. Trond Thuen, “Anthropological Knowledge in the Courtroom. Conflicting Paradigms.” Social Anthropology 12, no. 3 (2004): 265–87.
65. Anders Oskal et al., Ealát. Reindeer Herders Voice: Reindeer Herding, Traditional Knowledge and Adaptation to Climate Change and Loss of Grazing Lands (Alta, 2009); Retter, Israelsson and Winsnes, “Climate Change in Sápmi”.
66. Fjellheim, “Honourable Court”.
67. Ibid.
68. “Forskrift Om Konsekvensutredninger.”, FOR-2017-06-21-854 2017 (2017). https://lovdata.no/dokument/SF/forskrift/2017-06-21-854.
69. The two projects merged into one in 2009: https://www.mn.uio.no/ibv/forskning/prosjekter/vindrein/.
70. Jonathan E. Colman et al., “Sluttrapport Vindrein og Kraftrein. Effekter fra vindparker og kraftledninger på frittgående tamrein og villrein. Delprosjektene Kjøllefjord, Essand, Fakken og Setesdalen” (2014), 80.
71. OED, “Vindkraft og kraftledninger på Fosen – klagesak”. Olje- og Energidepartementet June 8 (2013), 114–115. https://webfileservice.nve.no/API/PublishedFiles/Download/200700502/761649
72. Ibid.
73. Joks and Law, “Sámi salmon, state salmon”.
74. Gunnvor Guttorm, “Árbediehtu (Sami Traditional Knowledge)–as a Concept and in Practice”. In Working with Traditional Knowledge: Communities, Institutions, Information Systems, Law and Ethics, eds. Gunnvor Guttorm and Jelena Porsanger (Kautokeino: DIEĐUT, 2011), 59–76; Jelena Porsanger, “The Problematisation of the Dichotomy of Modernity and Tradition”. In Working with Traditional Knowledge, 225–252.
75. Stems from the verb daajrodh which means to know.
76. Stems from the verb maehtedh which means to do.
77. There is another version of the proverb “Jahki ii leat jagi gáibmi”, where the word “gáibmi” (namesake) is used instead of “viellja” (brother). Porsanger, “The Problematisation”. In Working with Traditional Knowledge, 225–252.
78. Fjellheim, “Honourable Court”.
79. “Publikumsbesøk”. https://www.domstol.no/en/publikumsbesok/ (accessed May 8 2023).
80. Johnsen, Mathiesen and Eira, “Sámi Reindeer Governance in Norway”; Lawrence and Larsen, “The politics of planning”; Raitio, Allard and Lawrence, “Mineral extraction in Swedish Sápmi”; Law and Joks, “Indigeneity, Science and Difference”.
81. Lawrence and Larsen, “The politics of planning”.
82. Jonathan Colman, Sindre Eftesdøl and Kjetil Flydal, med fokus på hva som har kommet av ny kunnskap Siden 2008/2009 (NaturRestaurering AS, 2017).
83. Jonathan Colman, Sindre Eftestøl and Kjetil Flydal, Konsekvenser for reindriften som følge av vindkraft og kraftledningsutbygging på Fosen og Østre Namdal. -Faglige Innspill og vurderinger til Kommende rettsak I 2018 (NaturRestaurering, 2018), 7.
84. Olav Strand et al., Vindkraft Og Reinsdyr – En Kunnskapssyntese (NINA, 2017). https://brage.nina.no/nina-xmlui/handle/11250/2446889.
85. “Lov Om Forvaltning Av Naturens Mangfold (Naturmangfoldloven).” LOV-2009-06-19-100 2009. https://lovdata.no/dokument/NL/lov/2009-06-19-100.
86. Sindre Eftestøl et al., “Gradvis forbedring i kunnskapsgrunnlaget for virkninger av vindkraftutbygging på rein.” Tidsskrift Utmark. Temanummer: Vindkraft og reindrift 1 (2022), 49.
87. Øye Danell, Genomgång av rapporten “Kunnskapsstatus for effekter av vindkraftverk og kraftledninger på vill- og tamrein” Sammanställd av Naturrestaurering As (SLU, Uppsala: 2015).
88. Stuart Kirsch, Mining Capitalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014). https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520957596.
89. Proctor, “Agnotology. A Missing Term”.
90. Ibid.
91. Lawrence and O’faircheallaigh, “Rehabilitating Ranger uranium mine”.
92. Else Grete Broderstad, “International Law, State Compliance and Wind Power. Gaelpie (Kalvvatnan) and Beyond.” In Indigenous Peoples, Natural Resources and Governance. Agencies and Interactions, eds. Monica Tennberg, Else Grete Broderstad and Hans-Kristian Hernes (Taylor and Francis, 2022), 16–38.
93. Also quoted in Fjellheim, “Honourable Court”.
94. Fjellheim, “You can kill us with dialogue”.
95. Sarah Radcliffe, “Geography and Indigeneity I: Indigeneity, Coloniality and Knowledge.” Progress in Human Geography 41, no. 2 (2017): 220–29.
96. Michelle Daigle and Margaret M. Ramírez. “Decolonial Geographies”. Keywords in Radical Geography: Antipode at 50 (2019), 78–84. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119558071.ch14.
97. Porsanger, “The Problematisation”.
98. Sverre Fjellheim, Fragment Av Samisk Historie: Foredrag Saemien Våhkoe (Røros: Sør-Trøndelag og Hedmark reinsamelag, 1995).
99. Ibid.
100. Solveig Joks, Liv Østmo and John Law, “Verbing Meahcci: Living Sámi Lands”. The Sociological Review 68, no. 2 (2020): 305–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026120905473.
101. Mattias B. Rasmussen and Christian Lund, “Reconfiguring Frontier Spaces: The Territorialization of Resource Control.” World Development 101 (2018): 393. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2017.01.018.
102. Fjellheim, “You can kill us with dialogue”; Kuokkanen, “Is Reindeer the new Buffalo?”; Lawrence, “Internal Colonisation and Indigenous Resource Sovereignty”; Össbo, “Back to Square One”.
103. Saami Council, “Tråante Declaration”.
104. Fjellheim, “You can kill us with dialogue”; Lawrence and Åhrén, “Mining as Colonisation”; Rebecca Lawrence and Rasmus K. Larsen, “Fighting to be Herd. Impacts of the Proposed Boliden Copper Mine in Laver, Älvsbyn, Sweden for the Semisjaur Njarg Sami Reindeer Herding Community”. SEI Report, April 2019 (Stockhom: Stockholm Environmental Institute, 2019).
105. Lawrence and Larsen, “Fighting to be Herd”, 69.
106. Ibid.
107. Johnsen, Mathiesen and Eira, “Sámi Reindeer Governance in Norway”.
108. Mario Blaser, “Ontological Conflicts and the Stories of Peoples in Spite of Europe: Toward a Conversation on Political Ontology.” Current Anthropology 54, no. 5 (2013).
109. Ibid.
110. Sarah Radcliffe, “Geography and Indigeneity II”.
111. Kramvig and Avango, “The Multiple Landscapes of Biedjovággi”.
112. Frostating Lagmannsrett, “Skjønn. Gyldighet av ekspropriasjonsvedtak. Utmåling av erstatning” (Overskjønn June 8, 2020), 17.
113. Ibid., 6.
114. Cambou, “Uncovering Injustices in the Green Transition”.
115. Frostating Lagmannsrett, «Skjønn».
116. Ibid.
117. Biret R. Eira and Emmi A. Danielsen, «Får 90 Millioner Kroner – Nå Frykter Maja Kristine (26) for Framtida.» Nrk Sápmi, June 12, 2020. https://www.nrk.no/sapmi/reineiere-jubler-ikke-av-90-millioner-kr-i-erstatning-1.15047992 (accessed July 9, 2020).
118. Maiken Paulsen, “Dilemmaet Tilleggsfôring: En Nymaterialistisk Studie Av Tilleggsfôring Av Rein”. Ph.d. (Nord Universitet, 2021).
119. Supreme Court of Norway. Judgement. Appeal against Frostating Court of Appeal’s reappraisal 8 June 2020: 27. https://www.domstol.no/globalassets/upload/hret/decisions-in-english-translation/hr-2021-1975-s.pdf (accessed November 10, 2021).
120. Ibid.
121. Simen Granviken and Grete Holstad, “Fosen Vind Vil Søke Ny Konsesjon for Roan Og Storheia.” Adressa (Adressa.no), October 19, 2021. https://www.adressa.no/nyheter/i/g622E0/fosen-vind-vil-soke-ny-konsesjon-for-to-vindkraftverk (accessed November 10, 2021).
122. Olje- og Energidepartementet, “Storheia og Roan vindkraftverk – videre saksbehandling etter Høyesteretts dom av 11. oktober 2021 – forhåndsvarsel”, December 13, 2021.
123. Fjellheim, “You can kill us with dialogue”; Össbo, “Back to Square One”; Raitio, Allard and Lawrence, “Mineral extraction in Swedish Sápmi”.
124. Fosen Vind, “Forslag til utredningsprogram oversendt Olje- og energidepartementet” February 1, 2022.
125. Granviken and Holstad, “Fosen Vind Vil Søke Ny Konsesjon”.
126. Haavind, on behalf of Fosen Vind, “Forslag til utredningsprogram”, February 1, 2023. https://www.fosenvind.no/nyheter-og-media/.
127. Dalan, Fend and Brønner, on behalf of Fovsen Njaarke, “ROAN OG STORHEIA VINDKRAFTVERK – UTKAST TIL UTREDNINGSPROGRAM”, May 2, 2023.
128. Fjellheim, “Samisk folkeopprør mot en kolonistat”.
129. Elle Rávdná Näkkäläjärvi, “Statement on green colonialism and its effects on Saami youth”. Statement by the Nordic Saami Youth representatives. Agenda Item 3: “Indigenous Peoples, human health, planetary and territorial health and climate change: a rights-based approach”. UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), New York, April, 2023.
130. Kuokkanen, “Reconciliation as a Threat”.
131. Hugo Reinert, “The Skulls and the Dancing Pig. Notes on Apocalyptic Violence”. Terrain. Anthropologie & sciences humaines 71 (2019). http://hugo.re/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Reinert-The-Skulls-and-the-Dancing-Pig.pdf.
132. Nils-Aslak Valkepää, Greetings from Lappland. The Sami – Europe’S Forgotten People. Translated by Beverly Wahl (London: Zed Press, 1983).
133. Blaser, “Ontological Conflicts”.
134. Larsen et al., “The Impacts of Mining on Sámi Lands”; Lawrence and O’faircheallaigh, “Rehabilitating Ranger uranium mine”.
135. Joks and Law, “Sámi Salmon, State Salmon”.