Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the Russian Sami effort to create their own Parliament, like Scandinavian Sami, as a last resort to bring together the contradictory forces of state administration and international influence in order to unite the Sami community and improve its position in the wider society.

Paper long abstract:

The Sami, an indigenous group in the North of Russia, work to establish better political, economic and social positions. Sate legislation's vague formulations and arbitrary administrative practices together with controversial Western influence inspired by alien reform ideologies have brought fragmentation in the Sami community instead. The representativity of Sami political organizations is contested, while economic organizations are blamed for misappropriation of funds allotted for traditional economy. Sami cannot obtain their rightful fish quotas because of bad coordination, and reindeer herding cannot play the revitalizing role which it does for other indigenous groups because of the irrevocable changes which Soviet time caused. External efforts to raise tourism as Sami economy are accepted with enthusiasm by few people, because of bad infrastructure. The grasp of evolutionary theory that Soviet ethnography imposed and contemporary anthropology and public culture sustain, enforces upon the Sami the image of an "under-developed" people. These developments tear apart the Sami community inflicting identity fragmentation and feeling of decay on individual and group levels. The Russian Sami Parliament, following the model of the Fennoscandic Sami, has been recently created as a response to this crisis. It is grounded in alleged continuity with pre-Soviet Sami organization, thus laying the foundation for unity of all Russian Sami. By analogy with Fennoscandia, it aims to extend over the Sami of Russia a sense of stability and of a more equal and respectful position of an ethnic minority in a multi-ethnic democratic state, and hereof, of a more just social order.