Confronting Legacies of Indigenous Injustice: Lessons from Sweden

Abstract

The past decade has brought global efforts by settler colonial states to provide healing and justice for past and ongoing harms against indigenous communities. Many of these efforts have manifested in the creation of truth commissions, nonjudicial entities which seek to establish a reliable historical record of harm; promote reconciliation; and foster healing by providing harmed parties the opportunities to share their stories and—in some cases—to confront their perpetrators. To date, these commissions have been established by various settler colonial states, including Canada and Greenland. Most recently, however, Scandinavian countries have turned to truth commissions to provide redress for past harms against their indigenous peoples, the Sami. In fact, within the last few years, Norway, Finland, and Sweden have all created independent truth commissions to investigate their nations’ respective systemic discrimination against the Sami People and provide forms of healing and pathways to reconciliation.

This paper specifically examines the creation and operation to date of Sweden’s Truth Commission on the Violations of the Sami People by the Swedish State. Relying on materials issued by the Swedish Truth Commission as well as interviews conducted with representatives of the Truth Commission, this paper analyzes the events that led to the creation of the Truth Commission, its mandate and expected goals, and the type of work it intends to engage in to facilitate truth and healing among the Swedish Sami People.

Currently, there remains legislation pending in both houses of U.S. Congress for the creation of a truth and healing commission to address the use of Indian Boarding Schools in the United States, at which thousands of Native American children were removed from their families, forcibly assimilated into American culture, and often sexually, mentally, and physically abused. Utilizing diffusion theory, this paper seeks to draw lessons from the Swedish Truth Commission that the U.S. may learn from in creating its own national truth commission to address past harms against Native Americans.

Keywords: Transitional Justice; Truth Commissions; International Law; Sweden; Indigenous Justice