ABSTRACT
The Kola Sámi are an Indigenous group with an estimated total population of 1,599 people, who live on the territory of Kola Peninsula in Northwest Russia. In contrast to their counterparts in Scandinavia, the Kola Sámi have now lived in an urban environment for more than 50 years. The Sámi in Russia do not live in their traditional villages because they were closed as a result of the policies of collectivization and economic centralization from the 1930s to the 1970s, the years when the Sámi people were forcibly removed from their traditional territories. This chapter concentrates on how the relocations were carried out and describes the effects of those measures on the community life of the Kola Sámi. Economic impoverishment, unemployment and homelessness had a huge impact on the wellbeing of Russian Sámi society in its entirety.
