ABSTRACT
The recovery of Indigenous peoples’ own, originally oral, histories, which challenge dominant narratives and perceptions of the past, has been important for Indigenous peoples. Within Indigenous studies, this process of recovery has been described in terms of contested histories. Like other Indigenous peoples, also the Sámi, whose territories stretch across the northern parts of Nordic states and the Kola Peninsula, have regarded the recovery of their own histories as an aspect of decolonization comparable, in its importance, to political mobilization, or to the reassessment of Indigenous education. However, as Sámi history writing has become more established, gaining hold in formal and policy contexts, also these histories have become challenged and contested. Especially in Finland, the struggle over land rights in Sámi areas pushed local Finns and some researchers to reinterpret the history of Lapland, often in ways that appear mystifying and resembling from the perspective of established history research. This friction has also emerged between institutions, since the Sámi Parliament and the Ministry of Justice have built their own “truths”, which conflict with each other and to which their researchers stick firmly.
