• spirinolas@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’m very passionate about the Sami and very interested in their culture. There’s no doubt they are a historically oppressed people and indigenous to Sapmi.

    But let’s be rigorous here. They weren’t in Europe before everyone else like the First Nations in Canada. The Sami arrived in Europe, from the Urals in the 2nd millenium BC. By this time the Indo-Europeans and their languages were already spreading through Europe. The Neolithic farmers who mixed with the Indo-Europeans were there since the 7th millenium BC. The hunter gatherers they mixed with…were there since before the last ice age.

    You could make the case that the Basques are our first nations. That would be true of their language and culture. But the fact is, genetically, they are pretty much the same as their neighbors due to millenia of intermixing and contact.