Ethnic and Racial Studies

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Revitalizing the Indigenous, integrating into the

colonized? The banal colonialism of immigrant
integration in Swedish Sápmi

Nina Carlsson

To cite this article: Nina Carlsson (2020) Revitalizing the Indigenous, integrating into the
colonized? The banal colonialism of immigrant integration in Swedish Sápmi, Ethnic and Racial
Studies, 43:16, 268-286, DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2020.1776360

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ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES
2020, VOL. 43, NO. 16, 268–286
https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2020.1776360

Revitalizing the Indigenous, integrating into the

colonized? The banal colonialism of immigrant
integration in Swedish Sápmi
Nina Carlsson
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden

ABSTRACT
In an endeavour to understand connections between immigration policy and
contemporary colonialism on Indigenous territory, this study investigates how
state-led immigrant integration policies and practices reproduce colonialism
in Swedish Sápmi. It explores the applicability of scholarship on settler
colonialism on Sweden and develops the notion of banal colonialism by
combining scholarship on settler and everyday colonialism with banal
nationalism. Drawing from state documents regulating immigrant integration
and semi-structured interviews conducted with integration workers in
Swedish Sápmi, the study shows that immigrant integration policy largely
silences the colonial past and present of Sweden. While the implementation
of national-level policies on Indigenous land reproduces majority-centred
narratives, also practices challenging the colonial order are identified. The
study shows how the notion of banal colonialism captures mundane colonial
practices, but also brings attention to instances where immigrant integration
policy has the potential of challenging settler colonialism.

ARTICLE HISTORY Received 14 May 2019; Accepted 26 May 2020

KEYWORDS Banal colonialism; civic orientation; immigrant integration; Sápmi; settler colonialism;
Sweden

Introduction
Sweden’s self-understanding excludes its colonial past and present (Jansson
2018, 88–89), even though it has been part of the transatlantic slave trade,
the overseas colonization exercised by many European empires (Fur 2013; Sjös-
tröm 2001) and has an Indigenous population targeted by colonial practices.
Additionally, Sweden is, like many other Western nation-states, an immigrant-
receiving country with linguistic-cultural integration policies often presuppos-
ing national homogeneity. In an interrogation of integration practices taking

CONTACT Nina Carlsson nina.carlsson@sh.se

© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDer-
ivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distri-
bution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered,
transformed, or built upon in any way.
 ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES 269

place on the Indigenous territory of Sápmi,1 this study contributes to an under-

standing of contemporary colonialism in Sweden, as expressed in relation to
immigration. The study suggests the notion of settler colonialism for describing
the ongoing, structural colonialism on Indigenous land in Sweden. It also devel-
ops the concept of banal colonialism (Dlaske 2017; Davis 2012; Murphyao and
Black 2015) by relating settler colonial and postcolonial scholarship to banal
nationalism (Billig 1995). The concept is useful when describing the structural,
everyday, invisibilized, and routinized nature of colonial operations in a state
rarely described as settler colonial yet bearing several settler attributes. By indi-
cating “the unremarked upon actions and events that signal Settler belonging”
(Murphyao and Black 2015, 317), it brings attention to the (in)visibility of colo-
nial consciousness and discourses in relation to Sweden, particularly the nation-
building taking place through policies regulating immigrant integration. While
many Indigenous Sámi struggle with taking back and revitalizing their language
(s) and culture(s), newly arrived immigrants are integrating to a new society. The
Swedish state is involved in both processes by on the one hand granting pos-
sibilities for Sámi linguistic and cultural revitalization and on the other hand pro-
viding civic orientation courses for immigrants, containing requirements to
learn “the” national language and “the” societal values of Sweden. When coex-
isting in a colonized locality, these policies have different and even contradic-
tory aims. Colonialism and immigration are indeed closely intertwined
phenomena, whose connections need further scholarly scrutiny (Bauder
2011). By analysing presences and absences of Indigenousness in integration
policies for adult immigrants in Swedish Sápmi, this study investigates how
immigrant integration policies and their implementation in Swedish Sápmi repro-
duce colonial practices.
The empirical part of the study is based on firstly, an analysis of national-
level policy documents on civic orientation programmes and teaching
material, and secondly, an analysis of seven semi-structured interviews con-
ducted with integration workers and teachers in civic orientation programmes
in Jokkmokk,2 a municipality with strong presence of both Indigenous persons
and immigrants.

Colonialism and contemporary migration

The operations and consequences of colonialism are not uniform. Settler colo-
nial studies have emerged with the aim of describing forms of colonialism
that, according to some scholars, require an analytical framework additional
to those developed in postcolonial theory (Tuck and Gaztambide-Fernández
2013, 75). Settler invasion is ongoing and settler colonialism is characterized
by being eliminatory towards Indigenous peoples, motivated by gaining
access to territory (Wolfe 2006, 387–388), including an intention to make a
new home on it (Tuck and Wayne Yang 2012, 5).
270 N. CARLSSON

While the colonial actions of Scandinavian countries have been investi-

gated among others in relation to their colonial complicity (Keskinen et al.
2009), scholarship on settler colonialism has mainly focused on contexts
where immigration is central for the national imagination (Bauder 2011,
517; Spoonley 2015, 652), namely on North and South America, Australia,
New Zealand, South Africa, and Israel. “Ethnically” defined Scandinavian
nation-states, and thereby Sápmi, are seldom characterized as settler colo-
nial,3 yet similarities in − among others − linguistic-cultural challenges can
be identified between Sápmi and many Indigenous communities in settler
states.
Swedish history-writing is generally characterized by an absence of
descriptions of Swedish involvement in overseas colonialism (Naum and
Nordin 2013, 4), as well as of a lack of Sámi narratives (Fur 2008, 1–2).
Sweden’s most long-lasting overseas colony was the Caribbean island Saint-
Barthélemy between 1784 and 1878, regarded “an integral part of Sweden’s
colonial project” (Sjöström 2001, 73). Furthermore, 1.5 million Swedes immi-
grated to North America in the nineteenth century, taking part in displacing
Indigenous populations from their lands. Sweden has then governed overseas
colonies and taken part in the European settler colonization of North
America,4 in addition to the colonization of Sápmi. Definitions of colonialism
often include a separation by “salt water” between colony and heart of empire
(Emerson 1969). The lack of a sea border to the south of Sweden adds to the
terminological ambiguity when describing Sápmi, and thereby to the impor-
tance of developing contextually informed colonial frameworks on the
dynamics in Sápmi.
Despite a body of scholarship using the term “colonial” in relation to Sápmi
(see, e.g. Kuokkanen 2007; Magga 2018; Össbo and Lantto 2011), describing
the Swedish expansion to the North as colonialism is controversial; some his-
torians prefer the notion of internal colonization (Fur 2013, 26), which
however is problematic as the Sámi were only loosely connected to the
Swedish state until the sixteenth century (Naum and Nordin 2013, 6). A gov-
ernment report from 1986 concludes that the Swedish influence in Sápmi
cannot be called colonialism since the process lasted a “very long period of
time”, involving extended coexistence and claims of supremacy (SOU 1986,
36, 163–164), indicating that colonization needs to be rapid to be considered
as such. The main attributes of settler colonialism, namely the territorial take-
over and its structural, ongoing and eliminatory nature, can however be ident-
ified in Sápmi.
Whereas many Indigenous peoples have been victims of genocide, the
process of assimilating Sámi took mainly “administrative” pathways in
Sweden, which can be even more eliminatory in some cases “since it does
not involve such a disruptive affront to the rule of law that is ideologically
central to the cohesion of settler society” (Wolfe 2006, 402). Compared to
 ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES 271

some Western settler states, the Sámi in Sweden are particularly minoritized.
On traditional Sámi settlement areas in Sweden, only an estimated 1.69 per
cent of the population is Sámi, compared with the mere 0.2 per cent in the
whole population (calculated based on Statistics Sweden 2019a), while 16.5
per cent of the population of New Zealand is Māori (Stats 2018), and 4.9
per cent of Canada’s population is Indigenous (Statistics Canada 2016). The
majority domination in Sweden is remarkable, partly enabled by the centu-
ries-long policies of assimilation with church and schooling as the major
state instruments. The schools for Sámi children between the seventeenth
and twentieth century had attributes from colonial, civilizing education, and
were inspired by ideas on Sámi racial and cultural inferiority (Lindmark
2013, 135, 144). The state actions subsequently developed to “full-blown colo-
nial policies with racial overtones” (Naum 2016, 493), processes enabled in
part by a centuries-long state-supported settler migration to traditional
Sámi territories, a territorial take over and settler home making.
Importantly for the concerns of this study, migration has played a central
role for the colonization of Swedish Sápmi. The Swedish Empire explicitly
encouraged settler migration to Sámi territories by promising tax alleviations,
freeing men from war, and giving land, which by the eighteenth century
resulted in established Swedish and Finnish settlements in Sápmi (Fur 2005,
361). According to Kymlicka, state practices encouraging people to settle on
minority territories “are often deliberately used as a weapon against the
national minority, both to break open access to their territory’s natural
resources, and to disempower them politically” (2001, 75). While these disem-
powering tactics have not been used exclusively on Indigenous peoples, vir-
tually all Indigenous peoples have been targeted by them.
Contemporary immigration takes place in a vastly different context, yet may
also entail the risk that immigrant communities bolster the colonial system (Sar-
anillio 2013, 286). Immigrants and refugees can in some situations be invited to
be settlers and in others be illegalized, on settler terms (Tuck and Wayne Yang
2012, 17), while Indigenous peoples may have to compete with multicultural
policies in resource allocation (Spoonley 2015, 652). Hence, contemporary
immigration and Indigenous matters are interconnected, regardless of the
reasons behind migrating. Kymlicka (2001, 75–76) indeed claims that minorities
should have influence over terms of immigrant integration, given the devastat-
ing effects of state-led settler policies. In many countries, however, immigrant
integration is under full control of the majority state, including in Sweden
where the Sámi Parliament is rather a mix of state authority and political repre-
sentative with a weak mandate (Lawrence and Mörkenstam 2012, 208).
Given the connections between migration and settler colonialism, and the
weak Indigenous influence over integration policy, the concept of banal colo-
nialism is proposed for analysing immigrant integration policy on colonized
land. While the term occurs in prior scholarship (see, e.g. Dlaske 2017; Davis
272 N. CARLSSON

2012; Murphyao and Black 2015), it has rather been used descriptively or anec-
dotally than been theorized. Similarly to banal nationalism (Billig 1995) that is
routinely reproduced in a stabilized manner, the majority-centred underpin-
nings of immigrant integration seem unquestioned. In colonial contexts, the
concept of banal colonialism can be used for analysing the everyday acts of
a routinely neglect of the colonial situation. These acts generally do not
awaken protests in the same way as for example mining, possibly since
they are not “fierce” and debated publicly, but rather products of an estab-
lished colonial order invisible to many people. The concept can be used to
show how the eliminatory colonial structure operates. While some postcolo-
nial scholarship focuses on the banality of predictable, everyday practices in
the postcolony (Mbembe 1992), the ongoing nature of settler colonialism
where no end is in sight, and where Indigenous groups often are heavily min-
oritized, calls for additional analytical angles. A banal colonialist perspective
makes visible not only the taken-for-granted national domination, but also
brings attention to the weak presence of “the other”. The word banal does
not imply that the operations are harmless, nor that they are unnoticed for
everyone; rather, it directs the attention to what has been erased for the domi-
nant to be perceived as banal.

Tracing banal colonialism in integration policy: methodological

considerations
As settler colonialism and its institutional practices are “reproduced by narra-
tives, or discourses” (Calderon 2014, 316), national-level state documents on
integration and interview material from an Indigenous locality in Swedish
Sápmi are analysed by applying settler colonial perspectives and developing
the concept of banal colonialism. The material has been analysed in connec-
tion to silences, hidden meanings and presences of certain ideas, in line with
critical ideological analysis (Bergström and Boréus 2012, 148–149). The under-
pinning taken-for-grantedness of the current order and its colonial power
relations have been captured through an analysis of mentions and non-men-
tions of Indigenousness and colonialism.
Integration policy in an Indigenous context is a particularly suitable focus
for an analysis of banal colonialism. Firstly, as immigrant integration policies
are a constitutive and explicit part of nation-building, interrogations into
them contribute to our understandings of relations of dominance in colonized
contexts. Secondly, the state expects adult immigrants to lack language skills
and knowledge on the nation-state when enrolling in civic orientation pro-
grammes, which suggests more explicit nation-building ambitions than in
other educational programmes. Finally, in a colonized context, investigating
how colonialism is maintained through education is vital, from school curri-
cula to more rarely researched orientation course practices.
 ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES 273

The document analysis, based on the regulatory document on Swedish for

Foreigners (SFI), one nationally used book for civic orientation, and one
nationally used exam for Swedish as second language, aims to illustrate
how the state includes Sámi elements in policy and teaching material. The
Indigenous context selected for carrying out interviews on the implemen-
tation of national policies, Jokkmokk, has an ongoing Sámi revitalization
that leads to expect an Indigenous visibility also in terms of immigrant inte-
gration. It has a nearly equal proportion between immigrants − almost 13
per cent (Statistics Sweden 2019b) − and Sámi − around 15 per cent of the
inhabitants being in the electoral register of the Sámi Parliament, the
highest percentage in Sweden (Sjöstedt, Karlsson, and Weber 2017). Both
Lule Sámi and North Sámi are since 2000 recognized as official languages in
the municipality. The municipal council made a historical decision to make
Lule Sámi lessons obligatory in primary schools in 2018, following a Sámi
initiative. The decision, which would have led to Sámi and non-Sámi children
alike studying the Indigenous language of the area, was subsequently blocked
by the Swedish National Agency for Education (Sameradion & SVT Sápmi
2018).
Interviews were carried out in Jokkmokk with four language teachers (LT1-
4), one civic orientation teacher (CT), one integration officer (IO) and one cul-
tural officer (CO), following the logic of purposive sampling (Lynn 2016, 248)
through which different roles within the integration implementation were
covered. All interviewees were promised confidentiality. Some interviewees
had immigrant background and varyingly close connections to the Sámi,
and as semi-structured interviews enables access to the interviewees’ insights,
meanings, experiences and memories (Halperin and Heath 2017, 289), many
interviews led to reflections of a more personal character. They lasted
between 20 minutes and one hour, were fully transcribed, and all quotes
are translated from Swedish by the author. Questions were asked with the
aim of understanding the context (what kind of place is the municipality to
immigrate into), the Sámi presence in integration (what Sámi elements are
included), who determines the contents (can you decide on the material),
the significance of the municipality’s multilingualism (does the multilingual-
ism matter for integration) and perceptions on reactions by immigrants
(how do they perceive the Sámi presence).
The banal colonialist analysis of documents and interviews draws from
research on banal nationalism, everyday colonialism and settler colonialism.
Particular attention is directed to presences and absences of the Indigenous
(Calderon 2014, 319), erasures and normalizations of colonialism (Masta
2016) and the use of “we”, “us” and “them” (Billig 1995, 78–83; Antonsich
2016). The act of taking the current national order for granted (Billig 1995,
44) widely researched in scholarship on banal or everyday forms of national-
ism (Skey 2009; Jones and Merriman 2009), is in this study related to
274 N. CARLSSON

scholarship on the ongoing, similarly taken for granted structure of settler

colonialism (Wolfe 2006; Veracini 2015) and everyday colonialism (Rifkin
2014; Mbembe 1992). Analysing material where the Indigenous and the
expropriation of their lands is absent “registers the impression of everyday
modes of colonial occupation” (Rifkin 2014, 10), while its presences may
either reproduce an inevitability of settler rule (Calderon 2014, 326), and
thereby (banal) colonialism, or challenge the colonial rule.

The marginality of Sápmi in national-level immigrant

integration
Settler colonialism being an eliminatory structure (Wolfe 2006), it strives to
replace the Indigenous with the dominant language and culture of the
majority (Tuck and Gaztambide-Fernández 2013, 73). In the guidelines of
SFI, one of the most important, nation-wide, state-funded integration
measures, the central objective is to learn Swedish (Skolverket 2018, 7),
other languages remaining unmentioned. In the book About Sweden. Civic
orientation in English, distributed by the state to all orientation courses (in
11 different languages), Swedish demographics are described in numerical
terms under the title “Population”. What Swedishness is and who constitutes
the majority population remains undefined, banally taken for granted. In con-
trast to the non-definition of the majority population, two pages (out of 233 in
the English version) are used for describing the five national minorities,
namely the Sámi, Finns, Tornedalean Finns, Roma, and Jews. The Swedish
majority (“us”) needs no mention, yet the groups historically excluded from
the nation (“they”), even seen as threats to it, are named, yet symbolically mar-
ginalized in discourse as “populations”, or “asterisk groups”, while concealing
their erasure within the nation-state (Tuck and Wayne Yang 2012, 22–23).
The paragraph on Sámi includes a map with the title “Sápmi − Land of the
Sámi” where Sápmi covers half of the Swedish territory (as well as large parts
of Norway, Finland, and Russia). Murphayo and Black argue that “names have
the ability to carry on banal colonialism” yet can also be “(re)deployed as a
challenge to ongoing colonialism” (2015, 326). The toponyms on the map
are however in Swedish (or, as typical for settler colonialism, many being
appropriated from a Sámi word). Even though the map, used by a Sámi-led
organization, could be seen as an Indigenous countermap (Sletto 2009,
253), its distribution in this context could also signal how far the Sámi are
from achieving territorial rights5 and thereby an indication of how non-
dangerous Sápmi is perceived to be in the eyes of the state. The map
remains virtually uncommented, despite the potential controversies territorial
claims could awaken when shown on a map. Colonialism is not mentioned,
nor is the treatment of Sámi within the Swedish nation critically investigated.
The map that visibly challenges the colonial order can be distributed, since
 ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES 275

Figure 1. Map of Sápmi in book on civic orientation.

© samer.se. Reproduced by permission of samer.se. Permission to reuse must be obtained from the
rightsholder.

state authorities are not concerned or alarmed by representations where the

historical territories of Sápmi are claimed.
Contrary to the texts in the book, an exam by the Swedish National Agency
for Education6 for students of Swedish as a second language consists only of
texts with a critical investigation of the Swedish treatment of Sámi, Torneda-
lean Finns, and even of the Danish colonialism on Greenland, involving voices
of those targeted by assimilatory and colonial policies. Consequently, it chal-
lenges the colonial order and thereby provides an alternative to majority-
centred narratives erasing colonialism. In settler contexts, the state “is frag-
mented, incomplete, and challenged by ongoing Indigenous political exist-
ence and resistance” (Macoun and Strakosch 2013, 432), so also its
narratives. The narratives in the test, being written by minorities themselves,
thereby exemplify how resistance scatters the voice of the state. Amidst the
general erasure of the Indigenous, the few mentions reserved for Sápmi
reveal a narrative that both reproduces and takes present power relations
for granted and challenges the colonial past and present (Figure 1).

Immigrant reception on Indigenous territory – (re)producing

Sápmi’s marginality
When the majority-centred national-level policies are implemented on Indi-
genous territory, additional Indigenous perspectives are expected to
emerge. Masta argues that “[w]hile changing the curricula to address coloni-
alism is essential, teachers are the first step in changing the discourse in the
classroom” (2016, 191). Completing the majority-centred course curricula with
local perspectives is indeed left to the discretion of the teacher.
276 N. CARLSSON

[O]ne has to try to do some more locally inspired material. It’s nothing big. Like
for example the winter market7 if I take a small example, then you try to teach
the words that belong to that, to the winter market, culture and everything
related. And that’s when you also learn Sámi words. But they are only few.
But most Swedes [in the North] know only few Sámi words. (LT3)

Even when a teacher consciously includes Indigenous vocabulary, Swedish-

ness is, following banal colonialism, centred in both the curriculum and class-
room. Despite the active efforts by the teacher, the Sámi language only gets
the space of a few words in the course, the amount of words known by
majority Swedes. Outside of Indigenous territory, the teaching of any words
in Sámi can be expected to be rare, as not only the curriculum, but also the
majority language excludes Sámi vocabulary. In line with Albury’s (2015,
326) observation regarding the lack of Sámi loan words in Norwegian, the
Swedish language has almost no Sámi loan words, requiring active efforts
from any teacher wishing to include Sámi vocabulary. The teachers’ interest
and knowledge indeed factors in to how much Indigenous elements are
included (Interview with LT3) − a teacher who knows nothing about the
Sámi reflects it in their teaching.
The more advanced stages following SFI were by interviewees however
witnessed to include more Indigenous matters, suggesting that one is to
first gain knowledge in Swedish and then learn about Sámi in Swedish.
[Visiting] Ájtte [the Sámi museum], and then … they have to have reached a
certain level in order to understand, then you can bring in a lecturer or
someone who shows something, but most often it is so that the language
skills are not enough for such extra things (LT3).

The same linguistic requirement was witnessed by the CT who had completed
an integration programme in the municipality with initially little knowledge
about Sámi.
[I]n the beginning when you moved here, then you don’t know, Swede or Sámi,
now you can tell a little bit, that he is Sámi, he is Swedish, but then you never
thought about it. And it wasn’t that much you heard about the Sámi actually,
you thought that, Sweden, it is a Swedish country, no one had heard about
the Sámi. In the beginning. But when you learned the language, then, we got
to hear a lot about the Sámi in [high] school. (CT)

While both interviewees witness how the idea of a homogenous Sweden

is challenged in teaching, “the” language to be learned first means
Swedish, even on Indigenous territory. In line with the curriculum, the
teaching can in the initial stages do without mentioning the Indigenous,
thereby banally (re)producing the colonial by centring Sweden. As Tuck
and Yang argue, the Indigenous is treated as an additional “population”
(2012, 22), which is reflected also in the (institutional) separation from
the dominant society.
 ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES 277

But they shall know that I don’t understand those who speak Sámi for example.
That there are nursing homes with only Sámi speaking staff and customers, I
mean it is not appropriate to apply for [positions in] those places for example
since the language is decisive, the Sámi language. So that there are Sámi pre-
schools and schools, they shall know how the society is built up. And they
react on signs. Then I can say that I don’t understand [what is written on the
signs]. (LT1)

By marking distance to the Sámi language (“it”) and by pointing it out as

something that Swedes like the teachers, or Swedes-to-be, like the students
(“we”), cannot understand or access, they point out the societal peripherality
of the language not central enough to be the norm. In line with how settler
societies operate, it is simply a consequence of “how the society is built
up”, not an individual act but constructed by a state that erases the Indigen-
ous and implicates the rest (Snelgrove, Dhamoon, and Corntassel 2014, 7). In
contrast to New Zealand where the Indigenous Māori language is taught
nationally to Indigenous and non-Indigenous inhabitants alike (Albury 2015,
320), “Sámi language affairs … have become matters for Sámi to be
managed by Sámi” (2015, 324), a general approach to Sweden’s national min-
ority languages also observed by one interviewee.
The other languages are maybe not that significant, such as Sámi, Finnish, Meän-
kieli … for example in the school, you cannot learn Sámi as a Swede. I personally
find it a pity but it is not possible. (LT3)

The marginalized position of minority languages witnessed here can also

be connected to the previously mentioned state decision to hinder compul-
sory Lule Sámi education in all local primary schools, a Sámi-led initiative
blocked by the state.

Survival and normality under a colonial structure

Sámi survival in the colonial system is made a responsibility of the Indigenous
population, not the state. Scholarship on settler colonialism has been criti-
cized for making Indigenous resistance invisible (Macoun and Strakosch
2013, 436), while it is precisely resistance that has the potential of making
visible the ongoing colonialism to dominant populations, including persons
subject to integration policies. Virtually all interviewees could witness a rise
in Sámi visibility, especially among youth.
For the younger I think the agenda is to develop the Sámi society more than has
been done before. But the people is [numerically] so small so there always has to
be a group that is especially dedicated and that there is now. But one never
knows how that develops. (LT3)

The reflection was shared by another interviewee who noticed an increased

revitalization and encouraged the fight for survival.
278 N. CARLSSON

[Y]ou hear a bit more and more Sámi out in the society I think, I grew up here,
there has been a larger conscience among most of the parents, young parents
who transmit the Sámi. … Those friends I played with didn’t speak Sámi with
their parents. It was a pity because it almost died out, one can say. But now
there is a larger conscience and I hope they fight stone hard in order to make
Sámi survive. (LT1)

The observations on survival and dying out fall in line with the existence of a
settler-colonial structure, under which Sámi themselves are to fight the struc-
ture of elimination (Wolfe 2006, 390) through some dedicated individuals or
group of individuals that challenge and destabilize the incomplete settler
project (Macoun and Strakosch 2013, 432). Interviewees acknowledged the
need for boundaries for ensuring such a fundamental matter as survival,
which is why integration policy was not perceived being a concern for Sámi
preoccupied with maintaining their culture.
That has to do with it being a minority culture, then you have to keep the bound-
ary as sharp as you can in order not to be extinguished or assimilated. It is like
that all the time. (CO)

Drawing from Tuhiwai Smith (1999), Albury claims that majorities learning
Indigenous languages could equate to “the colonization of yet another indi-
genous commodity” (2015, 316). This could possibly extend to immigrants
learning the language and entering Indigenous institutions. While the neces-
sity of maintaining institutional boundaries to prevent assimilation was
acknowledged, the Sámi presence is for several interviewees a “natural”
part of life.
[O]ne becomes “home blind”, we don’t think about it since we grew up here, the
neighbour has two reindeer on his backyard, or five another winter, you don’t
reflect on it because it’s such a natural part. But still many parts of the culture,
I still think I am pretty aware, since I have many Sámi friends, but I still feel
that I don’t have knowledge about the parts that, I mean reindeer tours are
done in the mountains and in the forest. (LT2)

Calderon brings up the challenge “that most mainstream educators remain

ignorant of the realities of Indigenous communities” (2014, 331). Even for tea-
chers with insights in the Indigenous culture, the knowledge attainable is
limited. Following Tuck and Yang, “the settler is natural, whereas the Indigen-
ous inhabitant … [is] unnatural, even supernatural” (2012, 6). Acknowledging
the Sámi presence, yet seeing it as “obvious” and “natural” may indicate how
banal forms the colonialism takes, as it is rather than being consciously
reflected on, not given particular attention.
We of course tell about the culture and want them to learn about all people who
live in the municipality, both the Swedish culture and the Sámi, the settler
culture.8 So it is nothing that bears the stamp of it in a particular way,
 ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES 279

because for us the Sámi presence is simply totally natural, it exists, so it is

nothing one makes a big deal of. (LT1)

Banal colonialism is exemplified in the act of describing Sámi as “natural”, as a

culture alongside others without problematizing the dominance of Swedish-
ness nor what immigrants are to integrate to.
[T]hat is simply natural, we always say it when they come, in the short welcom-
ing talk that we have, because it is also important that you don’t feed people
with too much information, they have enough with landing in the fact that
they are here and will get food for the day more or less. But successively we
bring it up of course, that there is Indigenous population in this area and
what it signifies and such things, no there is nothing strange about that. (IO)

While interviewees do reflect on the Indigenous presence, the testimonies of

its naturalness and taken-for-grantedness, or banality, indicate that being on
Indigenous territory is treated without any particular reflection of the colonial
past and presence, not surprising given the lack of colonial descriptions in
relation to Sweden. Emphasizing the “naturalness” and normality could also
be read as implicit suggestion of the deviance of the colonial “other”, follow-
ing Tuck and Wayne Yang (2012, 6).
In contrast to the integration workers’ narratives, the Sámi presence was
reported to being considered as explicitly deviant by the students, indicative
of the lack of colonial discourses and Sámi visibility in relation to Sweden also
on a global scale.
Yes, they find it a little bit weird, that it is bilingual, this municipality, and that
one doesn’t understand [Sámi] at all. But I usually point at the family trees
that Swedish and Sámi is not on the same family tree. It is a Finno-Ugric
language. And we are Indo-European so then they usually understand better.
(LT1)

A division is created between ‘us’ and them’ in order to explain the for stu-
dents unexpected Sámi presence. The system enables students not having “to
think about the violence against Indigenous peoples if [they] choose not to”
(Snelgrove, Dhamoon, and Corntassel 2014, 7). On the other hand, the knowl-
edge of an “other” within Sweden may contribute to a sense of belonging in
the perceptibly homogeneous Sweden.

Multiculturalism and modernity on Indigenous territory

Tuck and Gaztambide-Fernández argue that incorporating Indigenous
peoples into a multicultural narrative is committed to settler futurity rather
than an Indigenous futurity (2013, 80). Furthermore, “multicultural”
approaches to oppression, or making gestures to Indigenous peoples
without addressing their sovereignty, are equivocations according to Tuck
and Yang (2012, 19). Multiple interviewees however did incorporate the
280 N. CARLSSON

Sámi within a multicultural discourse, identifying connections and alliances

formed between minorities. The CT, who originates from a minority group
in their country of origin, felt highly connected to the Sámi, especially due
to experiences of linguistic repression.
Yes, I feel like a Sámi myself, since I am a [ethnicity]. So I love the Sámi. Today we
watched a movie [called] Sámi Blood, it was really, really good. It reminds me of
my own culture and the place I grew up in [country]. I am [ethnicity] and cannot
write in [language] because it was forbidden to have in the schools there. So it
reminds me a lot of my own culture. (CT)

Similar feelings of connectedness to the Indigenous were reported to emerge

among some immigrants who related the information on Sámi to their own
country and their Indigenous peoples.
They can say, yes, it is more or less like where I am from, depending on where in
the world they come from there can be Indigenous peoples. (IO)

One teacher witnessed that while non-Indigenous migrants identify with the
Swedish, the opposite applies for immigrants belonging to Indigenous
groups.
The Swedish is closer. Sometimes someone belongs to an Indigenous group also
in their home country, but there are not that many that can draw those parallels.
(LT3)

An inability to identify similarities between the positions of immigrants and

Indigenous peoples and the desire to belong may lead to a support for the
dominant settler structures among immigrants, as Arat-Koç (2014) argues.
Some (non-Indigenous) migrants then may align with what Tuck and Yang
observe, when “becoming a subordinate settler is an option even when
becoming white is not” (2012, 18), rather than identifying with the Indigenous
political project. Immigration and Indigenous matters are nevertheless con-
nected in multiple ways (Saranillio 2013; Tuck and Wayne Yang 2012;
Bauder 2011), and Jokkmokk’s multiculturalism was witnessed to having ben-
eficial consequences for immigrant reception.
Over all, we have succeeded well with the welcoming. And that we have heard
from many directions, and we believe that it is due to us being multicultural
already when we started receiving. I absolutely believe that it has a big
impact, I believe so. It is self-evident, it is not strange for us that there are differ-
ences since we nevertheless are basically similar. (IO)

Some perceived connections between the groups could be associated with

ideas on modernity, a process that settler colonialism directly informs (Mor-
gensen 2011, 53). The interviewee witnessed how Sámi dwellings could
create a sense of recognition among some immigrants, just like agricultural
items from the nineteenth century seen in a summer house did.
 ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES 281

Many of these newly arrived have then come there to see and say, oh, we had
exactly one of them in Afghanistan … it’s a sense of home, it’s the same with this
Sámi. It is a lot that they can acclimatize to in their own lives. A factor of recog-
nition. (IO)

The interviewee also reflected critically on the narrow definition of family

among majority Swedes, contrasting it with perceptions of more inclusive
family conceptions among many immigrants and Sámi, and had with Sámi
acquaintances discussed observations on parallels in social control between
Sámi and Afghan youth. A shared vulnerability of being targeted by right-
wing political forces was also identified between both Sámi and immigrants,
creating joint resistance between Sámi, immigrants and Swedes. Such forces
that add the Indigenous to “the body of the different” (Rifkin 2014, 33) may
indeed lead to alliances between non-dominant groups.
The centrality of reindeer herding in Sámi culture can be contrasted with
the increasing urbanization and subsequently declining role of animals and
agriculture in Sweden. A boy who had previously worked with animals was
witnessed to enjoy the opportunity of working with reindeer.
We had a boy who came as unaccompanied minor, because we have tried to
have sponsors for those who come, mentors … I remember a guy, he got a
mentor who was a reindeer herder, so he was out in the reindeer forest, he
felt incredibly at home there. (IO)

Nature was testified to be important for most inhabitants in the rural munici-
pality, which stands in contrast to the Western, modern colonial hierarchies
privileging the urban over the rural (Grosfoguel 2011, 11), and to ideas of
Sweden as an urbanized, post-industrial and post-agricultural nation. The pos-
ition of Sweden on the top of global hierarchies, also perceived by students,
was problematized.
[T]here are these, upper and lower strata from the Swedish side, that Scandina-
vian is up, high up over everything else, and then it is hard for someone else,
who maybe doesn’t even have the knowledge to see what was good in [their]
country, what has led Sweden to at all reach this level. … you forget that
some countries such as Syria for example have had a fantastic cultural develop-
ment and have been leading, there Sweden is actually nothing … But no one
thinks about that, you just see poverty, war, and then people come here and
want help. (LT3)

The division between “us” and “them”, modern and pre-modern, dominant
and different, banally reproduced in state-led integration, can be connected
to colonial, civilizing ideas behind the assimilation and treatment of Indigen-
ous populations worldwide, including in Sweden. Politics of integration,
managing “good and bad diversity” through control (Lentin and Titley 2011,
200), belongs to the same continuum. Investigating connections between
phenomena seemingly separated, while continuously centring settler colonial
282 N. CARLSSON

dimensions, is vital for understanding and ultimately challenging (banally)

colonial nation-building processes in Indigenous contexts.

Conclusion
Adding to debates on Sweden’s colonial involvement, this study has explored
the applicability of settler colonial theories on the case of linguistic-cultural
immigrant integration in Swedish Sápmi. It has contributed to scholarship
on settler colonialism firstly by showing how integration policy can maintain
colonialism, and secondly by developing the analytical notion of banal colo-
nialism, applicable in both traditionally researched settler states and more
ambiguous settler contexts such as Sweden. Moreover, it has made a meth-
odological contribution by showing how the concept may be applied, and
an empirical contribution by suggesting such perspectives on contemporary
Sweden to policies rarely problematized as (settler) colonial.
Banal colonialism is proven useful to illustrate the ongoing and routinized
operations of colonialism when analysing empirical material. The concept
captures how policy and its implementation consistently centre the
Swedish, and how absences of Sápmi in documents (re)produce colonialism,
while its mentions generally silence colonialism. A process of othering indica-
tive of colonialism is revealed in the act of emphasizing the “normality” of the
Indigenous, while letting the dominant majority set the norm. Additionally,
despite expressing concerns for Indigenous survival, teaching the dominant
majority language is unquestioned among the interviewees, and Sámi survival
is seen mainly as a Sámi matter. Alongside the identified expressions of banal
colonialism, Indigenous revitalization and survival was explicitly supported.
The colonial order was challenged when narratives and visual representations
by minorities were included in the teaching material, and when the national
curricula were complemented with Indigenous perspectives in the classroom.
Commonalities and alliances were identified between the Indigenous and
immigrants, and the testimonies on some students aligning with Indigenous
struggles challenge dominant narratives of integration. Consequently, a
potential for alternative practices regarding what it may entail to integrate
in Sweden (on colonized land) is identified. As the reproductions of banal
colonialism among the state officials could be seen as an effect of an insti-
tutional, banally colonial system that permeates all Swedish state actions
rather than an indication of “bad intentions” among individuals, the state is
implicated in such potential reformulations.
Connecting the phenomena of integration and colonialism and bringing
attention to the mundane, seemingly innocent everyday reproductions of
the current order, helps us understand how the position of non-dominant
groups is not given but constantly reproduced in colonial nation-building pro-
cesses, within systems that privilege selected narratives. The study does not
 ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES 283

hold that banal colonialism is less dangerous or problematic than “hot” colo-
nialism, nor that the boundary between “hot” and “banal” is rigid (Jones and
Merriman 2009, 165–166). Furthermore, it does not in any way imply that Indi-
genous peoples should direct resources to immigration policies but has rather
aimed to point towards the taken-for-grantedness of the colonial present by
using nation-building through immigrant integration policy as example. While
it is important to raise attention to urgent colonial practices, such as mining
and burning of Sámi dwellings, attention should also be continuously directed
to institutional practices that go unnoticed for many, mainly non-Indigenous
persons, that fail to view the situation as colonial. Routinized, established colo-
nial operations are performed every day on Indigenous land, also in states
rarely described as settler colonial. An immigrant integration policy lacking
reflection on colonialism is certainly an example of how a colonial system
has attained banality. Interrogations into such practices contribute to refor-
mulating and challenging what integration may, and should, mean in colo-
nized localities.

Notes
1. A North Sámi term describing the traditional lands of Sámi. Around 80,000 Sámi
live in the area, of which an estimated 50,000 in Norway, 20,000 in Sweden, 8,000
in Finland, and 2,000 in Russia.
2. The Swedish name, Jokkmokk, is based on the Lule Sámi Jåhkåmåhkke.
3. For examples of the use of settler colonialism (asuttajakolonialismi) on Finnish
Sápmi, see Magga (2018), and for Swedish Sápmi (bosättarkolonialism), see
Kyrölä (2017).
4. For a settler colonial perspective on Swedish settlements in the US, see Hjorthén
(2015).
5. Such as the ratification of ILO 169.
6. The test for Swedish as a second language on high school level is in use by the
Swedish National Agency for Education between 2017 and 2024.
7. Jokkmokk winter market, which has been taking place since 1605.
8. Translated from nybyggarkulturen. Some of the nybyggare were Sámi.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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