Generation & gender change in reindeer herding – opportunities in Lapland

Congratulations to our research partners from the Sattasniemi Paliskunta in Lapland for their young empowering activism, which is now increasingly noticed also by journalists (see below).

Great to have seen a lot of young female herders involved at the Sattasniemi calf marking in early summer 2023

Having started working there this year in two projects funded by Canadian and US research foundations, I am impressed how seamlessly they integrate youngsters to working with reindeer and in the forest. This reminds me of my fieldwork with Yamal-Nenets nomads – another area where still young people consciously choose a nomadic lifestyle with reindeer, for the freedom it gives, for being your own boss, and the rhythm of life to be tuned mostly by the weather and the animals.

Yamal nomadic reindeer herding is more the exception than the rule in the Russian Arctic, for young people growing up in the tundra as nomads and choosing to continue to the livelihood of their parents (picture from brigade 4, Yar Sale, summer 2012)

Many of us who work with reindeer herders throughout the Arctic, and in land-based livelihoods there in general, know of a generation and gender imbalance in these livelihoods: Almost everywhere in the Arctic, many herders and hunters are from an older generation, and more likely to be male. Women more likely want to live in towns, get education and work in houses rather than outdoors. Piers Vitebsky has written about this impressively from Siberia, and Birger Poppel, Rasmus Ole Rasmussen and Laurence Hamilton for Greenland, for example. In some places in Lapland we face the same problem, and not everywhere are there enough young reindeer herders to take over from their parents’ generation.

In Sattasniemi, a paliskunta that faces so many impacts from all sorts of outside pressures, this is especially impressive: their winter pastures have been flooded by porttipahta hydropower lake, there are operating and prospective mines on their pastures, more mines impact them through pollution from possible new infrastructure, the forest where their reindeer should graze now in winter is partially devastated by clearcutting, part of their pastures are used by the military, while important sites on hilltops are increasingly occupied by windpower installations.

In this environment a group of young energetic female reindeer herders display an amazing enthusiasm for reindeer herding, where herding is much more than a job – it’s life and passion (that’s similar to how some of us anthropologists feel about our work:). Next year the Finnish state TV company YLE will feature one of our research partners in this light, and just recently the Finnish women’s magazine Anna has featured very prominently our other partner from Sattasniemi, Iida Melamies.

Iida and her son Axeli in their recent article in the Finnish women’s magazine Anna

We congratulate Iida for her positive spirit, her activism to empower the next generation, for her exemplary commitment to reindeer herding as a livelihood, and her openness to continue research with us for the benefit of reindeer herding as a livelihood in northern Finland, and the Arctic in general. Iida did a great job in that article highlighting the key issues and bringing good news of empowering the next generation of women in forest-based livelihoods in Finland to a new level! Good reading for anyone fluent in Finnish, and worth of machine-translating for those who don’t: https://anna.fi/ihmiset-ja-suhteet/kun-karhu-raateli-eman-viikon-vanha-poro-muutti-iidan-takapihalle-olihan-se-kuin-olisi-palannut-pikkuvauva-aikaan