If the Sami are considered the only indigenous group left in the European Union, what are the Karelians?

Submitted by Theworldsfuckedm8 t3_zw2b03 in history

I only in the last few years have heard and researched about the Sami people from mostly Norway and Sweden but too in Finland and Russia, and how they history is very similar to that of the indigenous of Canada.

Only today have I heard of the Karelian’s, and a quick search suggests they’re an indigenous group from Karelia, and area situated in Finland and Russia.

Does this mean the Sami are not the only and last indigenous group and if still, what’s the difference?

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Gonadaan t1_j1tx8yu wrote

Well there is basque people as well

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IllegitimateScholar t1_j1vt8q2 wrote

Basque people even are actually indigenous. Sami came later but just live in a traditional way.

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Skurrio t1_j1ty19j wrote

Well, it depends on which Definition of "Indigenous Group" you're using. You can go for a very broad Approach, like "Descendants from the first People who lived there" to "Cultural Minority that suffered from Colonialism and still doesn't have its own State."

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theosphicaltheo t1_j1u1tdk wrote

I can’t see how Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Cornish etc of the British Isles aren’t indigenous - plus localised people other regions of the UK eg Yorkshire - if they aren’t indigenous where are they from?

Etc etc etc with each countries ethnic-cultural sub groups.

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AnaphoricReference t1_j20zhtz wrote

Clearly Indo-Europeans don't count as indigenous, even if they have been around for at least 5000 years.

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manic7impressive_ t1_j1unpnv wrote

Ireland is still part of the EU, but the UK left the EU almost three years ago. So the Scots, Welsh, some Irish (Northern Ireland), Cornish, and even the English today, who are still genetic Brits at least predating Roman arrival, much more than they are Germanic, do not count as a default

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anewbys83 t1_j1vo34o wrote

What does a country being in the EU have to do with indigineity? Just because they left doesn't mean they're not a European nation, part of European culture, etc. Just the unique British Isles subsets. Celtic peoples certainly didn't care if their compatriots lived in mainland Europe or not. It does imapcr EU stats, but that's not the only way to define Europe and European.

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LateInTheAfternoon t1_j1vpuxq wrote

>What does a country being in the EU have to do with indigineity?

Nothing, but the question is about indigenous groups within the EU so anything about indigenous groups outside the EU is off topic.

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manic7impressive_ t1_j1xdyd9 wrote

The fact that the question is specific to EU nations. It’s part of the question, in direct reference, my dude

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anewbys83 t1_j22tpct wrote

Yep, my bad. My brain left out the union part.

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DeaththeEternal t1_j25ssr7 wrote

They're descendants of cultures that migrated in a long time ago, though this applies to plenty of cultures throughout history that never get all the caveats applied to them.

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AlpsTraining7841 t1_j1ueup5 wrote

The concept of "indigenous" in Europe is a bit odd. Neanderthals are the most indigenous. They were in Europe first. Then came anatomically modern humans who had black hair and black skin. These people don't exist anymore.

Unfortunately, I think when people say the Sami are "indigenous" they mean that the Norwegians, Swedish, and Finns colonized and oppressed them.

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DeaththeEternal t1_j25szor wrote

It's not really that odd, it's a reality that Indo-European peoples moved into Europe like they did into Iran and the Middle East and India. There were peoples already living there, of whom the Sami and the Basques are the sole cultures to make it, and the Magyars and Finns are peoples who moved after the Indo-Europeans arrived in much more recent times.

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DontWakeTheInsomniac t1_j1u952n wrote

I don't know how Karelians in Finland view themselves but please bear in mind that if Karelians are indigenous then ethnic Finns & Estonians could be considered indigenous too since they are broadly part of the same ethnic group. They all speak a closely related language, share mythology and folklore.

To answer your question, most Karelians live in Russia which is outside the EU. It also appears that Karelians have a Finnish identity - even in Russia they are taught Finnish in schools. https://minorityrights.org/minorities/karelians/

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ConsitutionalHistory t1_j1vi3fe wrote

Define indigenous and/or how many generations/centuries do a people have to live in an area before they themselves can be described as indigenous? As most people believe in the 'out of Africa' principle that human ancestry came from that continent...then technically, no Europeans are truly indigenous.

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JegElskerGud t1_j1wq89g wrote

And neither are Amerindians or anyone else for that matter.

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ConsitutionalHistory t1_j1zd9s0 wrote

Technically you're wrong...one could reasonably argue that a given black person in and around certain parts of Africa could claim to be the only true indigenous people on the planet.

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JegElskerGud t1_j1zy793 wrote

That would make me technically correct not technically wrong. And if mankind came from Africa then Africa belongs to people of all races as a motherland.

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AnaphoricReference t1_j20vb9x wrote

Not to mention that the current inhabitants of Africa did some large scale displacing and colonizing as well in recent history. The Bantu expansion (1000 BCE- 1 CE, iron age culture) is considered far more recent than the Indo-Europeanization of Europe (3000 BCE- 2350 BCE, late neolithic and copper age culture). If indigenousness is a race, Europe is likely to win from Africa.

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CoprophilicClown t1_j1vb0hh wrote

I feel like most Europeans would be considered “indigenous.” Unless they are immigrants living in Europe or their ancestors were immigrants, if they can trace their ancestry back to anywhere in Europe I don’t see how you could say they are not indigenous. The Sami are most-likely falsely considered the “only indigenous Europeans” because Europeans do not think of themselves as tribal people living off the land. This is obviously NOT what indigenous means. Most Germanic and Eastern European countries have been mixed with “non-indigenous” genetics like the mongols and turks, but probably, so have the Sami. The only people in Europe you could argue are the least “indigenous” by this logic would probably be southern Europeans who mixed greatly with north Africans, mongols ect. but it still seems odd saying Italians or Spaniards are not indigenous to the area as their ancestors have likely been there for as long as humans have been in Europe.

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Tex089 t1_j1vo8xx wrote

Forgive my ignorance, but is it not believed that Sami settlement does not predate Norse/Scandinavian settlement? In which case, what criteria is used to define the Sami as indigenous but Scandinavians as not?

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LateInTheAfternoon t1_j1vror5 wrote

Generally three criteria: 1) the Sami have inhabitated northern Fennoscandinavia for millenia (Norse people only settled in the southern part and along the coasts) 2) their lands were colonized in the 19th and 20th century by Sweden, Norway and Finland 3) they have kept to their traditions despite rather cruel attempts to assimilate them.

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Tex089 t1_j1w2v4j wrote

I appreciate the answer. I'm still not sure I understand the classification. If all European peoples arrived via migration, and both peoples settled in their respective areas at the same time, then by that criteria either both or neither would be considered indigenous Europeans, with later colonization only affecting the indigenous status of that specific area.

Apologies if that doesn't make sense, or seems confrontational. I'm ignorant on this subject and just trying to understand.

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DeaththeEternal t1_j25tamc wrote

It's more of a set of assumptions about 'Old Europe', of which the Basques and the Sami are the last remaining traces, versus the Indo-European versions. The various Indo-European cultures that were ancestral to modern cultures wrote about these cultures around them or they left linguistic traces in substrates and perhaps in the ways that Indo-European languages evolved and why they evolved in those ways.

It's also the same thing as why Arabs are Indigenous to the Middle East after conquering it in the 600s but the Greeks they replaced weren't in spite of being there for 1,000 years prior to that. The concept does have some semantic wordplay and double standards attached IRL.

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Tex089 t1_j25ww5d wrote

I appreciate the in-depth answer. Thank you.

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[deleted] t1_j1y5tmp wrote

So the Sami's climbed over the 1 km thick ice? The Sami's is the same as "skidfinnar" and they were not all reindeer keepers.

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LateInTheAfternoon t1_j1yctcj wrote

>So the Sami's climbed over the 1 km thick ice?

FYI the ice had disappeared some 8000 years before they even appeared there. The Sami have inhabited northern Fennoscandinavia for ca 3500 years, which I think you'll find is several millenia.

>The Sami's is the same as "skidfinnar" and they were not all reindeer keepers.

No one's claimed anything to the contrary. Do you think their culture and traditions only concern reindeer herding? Or do you think that that is what others wrongly believe? Why do you bring it up?

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impossiblefork t1_j2ei03p wrote

It does not predate Norse/Scandinavian settlement other than in Lappland.

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DrBriscoe t1_j1wm5fb wrote

The Sami aren’t the only indigenous group of the EU, there are also the basque.

Depending on your definition of indigenous there would be far more cultures and peoples who would fall under indigenous

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JegElskerGud t1_j1wqgkg wrote

Odd to word your question as European Union versus Europe. Even Norway isn't part of the EU.

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Theworldsfuckedm8 OP t1_j1ztl8j wrote

It’s not that I don’t agree with what you’re saying, it’s just the original post I’m referring to makes reference to the European Union

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Party_Broccoli_702 t1_j1ui3ck wrote

I would say the Sami are not the only indigenous group left in the European Union.

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CoprophilicClown t1_j29ybgg wrote

Even if Europeans were completely mixed together it still doesn’t exclude them from being indigenous. We wouldn’t say Native Americans are no longer indigenous because they roamed around all of North America and South America mixing genetically. Just because one group originated from a different area in Europe and mixed with another doesn’t mean they are now not indigenous to Europe. I find it odd that this is even disputed.

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MarioSpeedwagon13 t1_j1wdagq wrote

Funnily enough, the Irish are indigenous to Ireland.

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akodo1 t1_j20dj88 wrote

It's sloppy terminology. By Sami they mean "ethic groups associated with the finnic-uralic languages, of which the Sami are the most well known"

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DeaththeEternal t1_j25sp1v wrote

Karelians are a Finnic people and Finno-Ugric peoples 'originated' in the interior of modern Russia. Finns and Karelians and Hungarians are all distant kin, linguistically (the Hungarians) or the equivalents of Germans and Austrians (Finns and Karelians). The other indigenous group are the Basques, not the Karelians.

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[deleted] t1_j1uesxf wrote

[deleted]

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waiv t1_j1uo5yc wrote

Both samis and germanic scandinavians settled relatively late and replaced other people's living in the area.

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throwawaybreaks t1_j1u02wt wrote

There are a few populations that are significantly pre-indo-european, there are some non-indo european groups who arrived around the same times. It's kinda hard to discuss "indigenous groups" in europe though since its basically a huge melting pot genetically, the phoenecians were probably in ireland before the celts got there, and its generally difficult to tie language/material culture/descent group to each other in areas where DNA wasnt well preserved before writing systems developed.

But yes, in some ways the sámi are essentially an indigenous people, insofar as any bipedal ape expansion wave can be considered non-african, especially from the perspective of modern Europeans who are overwhelmingly of Indo-European lineages and cultures.

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