The Sami are a Northern indigenous people whose land, Sapmi, covers territory in Finland, Norway, Russia, and Sweden. For the Nordic Sami, the last decades of the twentieth century saw their indigenous rights partially recognized, a cultural and linguistic revival, and the establishment of Sami parliaments. The Russian Sami, however, did not have the same opportunities and were isolated behind the closed border until the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This book examines the following two decades and the Russian Sami's attempt to achieve a linguistic revival, to mend the Cold War scars,...

"Excellent chapters detail the emergence of cross-border ties between Russia's Sami communities and Nordic Sami and assess their contributions to cultural renewal... The socioeconomic and cultural portrait will likely seem all too familiar to scholars of other Arctic and subarctic indigenous populations in northern Eurasia, but some of the information is unique to Russia's Sami, making this an indispensable contribution to the documentation of northern peoples. Essential." - Choice

"The Sami political movement, although mentioned in many works, has been a central topic in very few...