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Referring to the Sami as "Indigenous" in contrast to the Scandinavian and Finnish peoples seems pretty tendentious. All three of these groups have been in Northern Europe for thousands of years.

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Despite the dictionary definition of the word, "indigenous" is more often a statement about the relationship with the state than a statement on cultural or geographic continuity. The Sami have a very different relationship to the Nordic governments than other Fennoscandian groups.

Yeah, that's precisely what I'm objecting to-- smuggling in assumptions about the relationship between Sami and other Northern-European populations by using a term that implies that Scandinavians aren't native to Scandinavia, at least as much as any human population is native to anywhere.

In particular it obscures what is fundamental to the conflict, which is state/settled vs non-state/tribal, not one group being native to the land and the other being some sort of outside occupying force.

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