The Real Story

Goodhearted people and journalists all too easily believe the romantic fairy tale of the Finnish Sami as a poor, oppressed indigenous people fighting for their rights. That narrative is of course nearer the stereo- and archetype "little group fights for their rights" -story than the historical truth. The latter, which can be verified by facts, records and scientific research published in peer-audited scientific publications, is ways more complicated and does not fit so easily to the standard magazine article format. But on the other hand the true story is much more amazing.

A book from the 17th century tells us that the Sami called themselves "Sami" (Saami, sápmi, sabmelas etc.), and that other peoples in their own languages gave them other names. The Norwegians called them Finns (without mixing them with the Finns of Finland), the Swedes called them Lapps, the Finns Lappalaiset, the Russian Lopari etc. The scarce Sami population until the early 20th century lived scattered in autonomous villages without any resemblance of a common, not to talk about a centralized organization of their own. A Sami village refers to 1) a group; the families living in the village, 2) an area; the land owned by the families and 3) a settlement; the common winter village of relatively stationary Sami, or the migrating village of nomadic Sami.

The Sami villages negotiated with their neighbor villages on basis of need, but the village system never developed farther to a more complex political structure. The reasons were many. There simply was no need, the system worked well enough as it was. The people were too few, the distances too long. The Sami did not consist of a single people with a common culture and a common language, but of several culture and language groups, living in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. The Sami paid tributes to these countries, originally in commodities like furs. It was common that a village paid taxes to two or even three countries (until 1826).

The original livelihood pattern for the Sami villages was probably that of hunter-gatherers. At this stage the Sami were not herders and nomads, but hunters, fishers and gatherers. The most important prey as a source for food and material for clothes and other things necessary for living was the wild reindeer, which (probably) is an ancestor of the smaller, semi-domesticated reindeer. The wild reindeer hunt was organized by the village as a common task. First in importance for paying the taxes were the fur animals. The taxes were levied on the families, but the village was made responsible for paying it.

The moving pattern of hunter-gatherer Sami was different from the reindeer herding Sami. In summer and fall the families moved out to their ancestral lands, where they moved around between several living places. The pattern was dictated on the grounds of what the nature could give in the different places, in the form of fish, wildfowl eggs, edible plants, berries and also birch bark, three roots, hay and other materials. In the winter the families gathered in the common winter village. This movement pattern tended to give the village lands a round form with the winter village more or less in its center. The winter village had to be moved after some decades, as the firewood had to be gathered and hauled from longer and longer distances.

The wild reindeer hunting Sami owned also domesticated reindeer, but typically a family owned only a handful or less of them. These reindeer were originally snared alive from herds of wild reindeers, and used to draw the "pulk" sleds for people and goods, and for stalking and catching wild reindeer. The latter was done either by locking wild reindeer bulls with domesticated reindeers in heat, or by stalking small herds of wild reindeer using a domesticated and trained reindeer as shield.

Large-scale Sami reindeer herding is probably of younger origin than the hunting-gathering culture. No evidence for this is at hand, but the pattern for how the transition from wild reindeer hunters to herders of semi domesticated reindeer can have developed can be logically explained. It is possible to keep a handful of domesticated reindeer fenced when not in use. It is still possible to herd a small flock of reindeer around and near the village under intensive surveillance. But as the herd grows, the reindeer eat all there is of food in the place and trample the earth so that it will not grow new lichen until it has given a chance to rest. Thus a big herd must be moved constantly, and as the herd grows, the herding of it asks for more hands. This leads to a nomadic pattern, where the village moves with the herd for most times of the year. The moving pattern stretches between winter and summer pastures in form of elongated strips of land.

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The taxation of the Sami began latest at about the time of the consolidation of the kingdom of Norway (about year 1000), but is probably of older origin. The routes of the fur that the tax collector-traders extracted from Sami hunters and trappers vent through the Scandinavian capitals to Bysantium and the courts of central and south Europe. We will not here dig into the detailed history of how the borders between the national countries of Scandinavia came to be. So much must be said, that the peace treaty of Strömstad in 1751 between Denmark (of which Norway then was a part) and Sweden (of which Finland was a part) defined in detail the old border between Sweden and Norway along the Kölen mountain ridge, and the until then very roughly defined northern part of the border.

In the southern parts of the countries where part of the Sami lived the border was not a new thing, but the treaty also came with some moving of the borders, mainly up north. As a result the land of many villages and families was divided.

It had been an established custom that reindeer herding Sami families and villages on the move between summer and winter pastures had crossed the borders, in times of peace mainly without being harassed by the national authorities. The 1751 peace treaty of Strömstad had an appendix, Lappekodicillen ("The small law concerning the Lapps"). The Sami who owned lands on both side of the border where given three years to choose the country which they wanted to be subjects of, and to sell their lands and other property in the other country.

If these regulations could be seen as pressing the rules of the national states on the Sami, there was also a bright side of the Lappekodicillen, and with these regulations the document was probably a first in written European law. It granted the Sami to cross the borders with their herds according to their old manners not only in peace, but also in time of war between the nations. The Sami where thus defined as non-belligerents. They had to keep to some formalities and pay a lease for the right of land use in the other country. The lease was not heavy, and as the level of the lease was fixed, it made an end to attempts of local authorities and landowners to levy higher taxes and leases on the border crossing Sami herders.

We can note, that after deciding for one country, the Sami were still allowed to cross the borders without their reindeer herd, say for visits and for selling their products and buying supplies. It was also still possible to emigrate, also with the reindeer herd, to the other country, following the laws of both countries. Here the laws made no difference between the Sami and other people.

There has been, and still prevail, communities of fishing Sami along the coasts of the Arctic Ocean and some bigger, salmon-carrying rivers. As the large-scale, nomadic reindeer herding by a part of the Sami increased, it came to dominate the picture of Sami among the scientist and other travelers of the time that made their long way to the lands where the Sami of different cultures lived. This led the outsiders to draw the wrong conclusion, that nomadic, large-scale reindeer herding represented not only one cultural form among the diverse Sami forms of culture, but the original Sami culture. Parallel with the reindeer herding Sami there existed, especially in Sweden, Sami that followed the older living and movement pattern. These Sami the scientist began to class as "forest Lapps".

The scientists and authorities on regional level explained to the state authorities that the nomadic Sami contributed to the wealth of the nation by making use of lands that were to no use for agriculture. The other Sami, on their side, represented a decadent form of the Sami culture and race, people that were unable to do any good for the nation or themselves. That view came partly from the fact that some individulas or couples among the nomadic Sami settled down as they got too old and weak to follow the village, and lived the rest of their life as fisher Sami at some lake, often in great misery.

The nomadic Sami of the time had only oral tradition to bear the history of their families and villages. As the learned men -- scientists, priests and administrators -- told them that the nomadic Sami were a culture stemming from the dawn of times, and the other Sami degenerated, the nomads adopted this idea. The nomadic Sami where called by many names, the most common of them being fjällappar (mountain Lapps), to differ them from the "forest Lapps". One name, used also by the nomadic Sami, can be translated as "highland Lapps" or simply "high Lapps". This term now got also a connotation of social class, of being above the rest of the Sami and all others. This view still seems to cling to some North Sami politicians in Finland.

The authorities began to favor the nomadic Sami and suppress the forest Sami, as the latter was seen as a burden and a nuisance to the agrarian society and thus to the nation. The nomadic Sami were provided with teachers who spoke their language (although their teaching was in Swedish). To begin with the children of nomadic Sami families where taken into boarding schools, later the teachers followed the migrant families, so that the children would not be estranged from the nomadic Sami lifestyle. The children of the forest Sami were pressed into local Swedish language schools, to be trained in the Swedish language and culture only and thus totally assimilated. The resulting accelerated decline of the forest Sami culture led to an increasing misery among the forest Sami. In the regions southern of the official lappmarks (Lapp counties) part of them were integrated in the main Swedish people, part "fell out of their class" into an existence of the sockenlapps, a pariah group consisting party also of other than Sami individuals. They lived on as good they could by performing different services to the parish and the farmers. Some of their tasks were typical pariah jobs, like gelding, butchering and flaying horses, putting of and flaying dogs, tanning hides etc. By the middle of the 19th century all sockenslapps were integrated in the Swedish population, and the memory of them faded.

With the Lappekodicillen as legal ground, the reindeer herding Sami practiced their nomadic lifestyle crossing the border if that was a part of the custom of the particular Sami village. Their production of reindeer meat and other reindeer products developed in a more and more market oriented direction, as the products were sold and bartered to what the Sami needed of food and other commodities in addition to what they produced for their own use. At the end of the 18th century the large-scale reindeer herding in the eastern parts of northern Norway (the Finnmark) got into crisis. In places deadly diseases decimated large herds. At the same time the number of herds increased, and so did the number of animals in these herds. This put a hard pressure on pasture lands and internal competition between different Sami reindeer owners. From this arose a need to find new suitable lands.

As a result of the 1809 peace treaty between Russia and Sweden Finland had become an autonomous state with the Russian emperor replacing the king of Sweden as head of state (in Russia the Tsar was autocrat, but as Grand Duke of Finland he was obliged to follow the Swedish law that Finland inherited as stated in the peace treaty). The peace treaty defined the border between Sweden and Finland so, that also areas that in all or for times had been administered as parts of Sweden proper now became to belong to Finland. These parts were the lands east of the Torniojoki river, the Käsivarsi ("arm") making kind of a corridor north of Sweden, and the Utsjoki parish. With the "Arm" and the Utsjoki parish followed nomadic Sami in the "Arm" and nomadic and river fishing Sami in Utsjoki. These Sami were descendants of the wild reindeer hunting and fishing Sami who had lived on those lands long before the dawn of large-scale reindeer herding. With the decline of the wild reindeer population, these Sami had switched from hunting to herding reindeer. The fishing in the Tana river and its estuaries continued like before. This Sami had their own language, called north Sami. However, at the time of establishing of this new border for Finland, most of the Sami living within the borders of the new Grand Duchy were hunting-gatherers and fishers, with their own variants of the Sami language. If a family owned reindeer, these could typically be counted on the fingers of one hand. Finland had also some indigenous forest Sami who were reindeer herders on a smaller scale, mainly in the western parts of Lapland. In the southeastern parts of Lapland the forests Sami had been assimilated in the growing Finnish-speaking agricultural population at least when it came to their variant of the Sami language. Or so it seemed. Modern research has changed the main picture: the two cultures assimilated to each other, a forming a new. This North-Finnish culture combined the both cultures, preserving what was useful and best suited for making a living in the harsh environment. The result was a way of living based on agriculture, middle-scale, non-nomadic reindeer herding, fishing, hunting, tar production and later also forestry. In these parts of Finland the Sami where either totally integrated in this culture, or integrated to a degree which led them to lose the sense of their identity and roots, which is the more understandable as the nationalistic movement in Finland idealized the national state reflected in the nationalistic slogan "One people, one mind, one language". In our day there has emerged a movement for unearthing the old Sami roots, identity and indigenous people rights among inhabitants of these parts of Finland, mainly south-east of the official Sami homeland.

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But let us move our focus to the early 19th century. The great picture was that the Sami lived as culturally differentiated subcultures in Norway, Sweden and Finland, and also in Russia. They had lively economic exchange with the “main peoples”, and were partly integrated in the main cultures, the degree depending on which of the countries they lived in, and what cultural subgroup they belonged to. Especially the Lapps that got their livelihood out of large-scale, market oriented reindeer herding moved freely across the borders. These nomads were more on the move and lived farther from the influence of the main cultures of the national states. Thus the influence and pressure that led stationary Sami to integrate were less strong on the nomads. The Sami belonging to subgroups with more stationary moving patterns lived inside the borders of their particular national states, which did not hinder them from crossing the border for getting commodities or fishing at the coast of the Arctic Ocean.

At this time the growing demand on pasture lands for reindeer in northern Norway led some of the nomadic Sami families in Norway to extend their migration patterns southwards into Finland. Also the Utsjoki reindeer herding Sami expanded longer to the south, into the lands of the Inari Sami village. The Inari Sami of those days where not large-scale reindeer herders, but fishers, hunters and gatherers. They had and still have a Sami language of their own, the Inari Sami laguage. The wild reindeer was strong on decline, and so was the precious beaver. The nomadic Sami of Utsjoki and Norway who began to explore the lands of the Inari Sami village, got the picture that the land was there just waiting for them to use as reindeer pastures. They took up new migration patterns on what they considered virgin and uninhabitated land.

The Inari Sami did first welcome the newcomers, some of whom were their relative. But soon it became obvious to both parties that there were problems. Many of the Inari Sami had established farms on their ancestral lands to protect their interests from competing villagers and settlers from south of Finland, who gradually began to establish themselves as homesteaders also in these northern parts of Lapland. As in Norway there were conflicts of interests between the nomadic Sami and the farmers, the majority of whom still were Sami. 

The main cause of conflicts was that the reindeer of the nomads consumed and destroyed growing grass in nature and cultivated meadows of the farmers, and hay that the farmers had stored in remote barns and hayricks to be hauled to their cattle by reindeer and sled in the winter.

The Inari Sami also had their traditions to spare the reindeer pastures near the village and along the main winter routes, to be used by the priests, administrators and the Sami themselves when on the move. This lichen pastures were now under threat from the herds of the nomads.

Then there was the conflict between wild reindeer hunting and herding semi domesticated reindeer. There are some very concrete factors that make it impossible to have both these activities on the same land for any length of time. The wild reindeer was on decline, and it was harder and harder to catch them as the prey was both scarce and extremely shy. The reindeer herds of the nomads, with the herders and their dogs, made the wild reindeers so spooky that they moved away. Where a nomad Sami on the move came across a wild reindeer, he considered it his legal prey and shot it for food. His other reason for taking out the wild reindeer was that these tended to disturb and shatter the herd of half-tame reindeer, causing parties of it to break out of the herd to join the wild reindeer. And so there were the snares that the Inari Sami had put up in hundreds to catch the wild reindeer. As the nomadic Sami saw snares, he saw a threat to his reindeer and cut them down in anger.

All this was carried into the ears of the provincial authorities of Lapland, and to the high authorities in the south. These complaints against the Norwegian Sami met the diplomatic interest of the Russian empire, which used them to press Norway and to manifest its presence and power. The negotiations between Norway (in personal union with Sweden) and Russia (in charge of the international relations of Finland) led to a treaty 1826, defining the Russo-Norwegian border in detail and putting an end to the Fellesdistrictet (Norwegian for the last part of land that both Norway and Russia had taxed). But both the stream of complaints from Lapland and the needs of the international politics of Russia, Sweden and Norway led to a deterioration of the relations, which was manifested at the northern borders.

From 1852 onwards Russia closed the border between Finland and Norway for the herds of nomadic Sami (but not for individual Sami without a herd). Again the nomadic Sami had to choose one of the national countries as their homeland. Some families tried to cope with the closed border by driving their herds to the border, where it was handed over to relatives living on the other side. Soon enough the authorities on both sides strengthened the guarding in the name of hindering disturbances of the border peace. Other Norwegian Sami families emigrated to Sweden and crossed the Swedish-Finnish border with their herds as they migrated between winter and summer pastures.

In 1889 Russia closed also the border between Finland and Sweden. Some nomadic Sami families emigrated from Norway and Sweden to Finland for good, some of them re-emigrated to Sweden and back to Finland again, partly as a means to go on with their migration patterns, partly as they had difficulties to determine which solution was the best.

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As a result of this complicated development Finland had several Sami groups with differing origins and settling timing and history, differing ownership of lands, differing cultures and ways of procuring their livelihood, and differing languages. The situation was completed further, when Soviet Russia handed over the Petsamo area to Finland in 1920. With the area followed a population of Skolts or Skolt Lapps, today called Skolt Sami. These Sami were fisher-gatherers and small scale reindeer herders. They were Greek Orthodox to their religion, as all the other Sami were Lutherans. The Skolts had a culture with distinctive treats that differed from the other Sami, and they spoke a Sami language differing in many ways from the other Sami languages. To complete the picture: the Skolt had adopted tea as one of their life elixirs and brew it in a samovar, as the rest of the Sami had adopted coffee as one of their life elixirs, and had a sooty coffee kettle as a dear companion at home and where they vent. As a result of WW2 Finland lost Petsamo to Soviet Russia. The Petsamo Skolts, who during the war had been evacuated to a safer place in Finland, were given the choice between returning to Soviet or staying in Finland. They chose Finland, and in 1949 most of them were settled in Inari commune, on lands of the former Inari Sami village. No one bothered to ask the Inari Sami.

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We can see that the Sami people historically consisted of village groups with different cultures and languages, living in four national states. The cultures and languages of these groups are relatives to each others, sometimes very near relatives, sometimes quite far, but still different.

The "Sami People" as a common, unified people is an ethnonationalistic, ideological construction that saw daylight in Sweden in the late 19th century. In an attempt to boost the self esteem the Sami had lost as a result of Swedish dominance and cultural integration, the small Sami intelligentsia, with the help of religious philanthropists, developed the idea of the ancient Sami people. The main goal of this movement was not to consolidate the Sami to build a state of their own across the borders of the national states, but to lift the Sami culturally, so that they could become active and loyal citizens in their own countries.

The Sami ethnonationalistic movement in the different countries in co-operation and covert conflict with the national states produced a policy that led to a slow rise of the socioeconomic situation and cultural level of the Lapps, but still at the cost of deepened cultural integration. This process also integrated the developing Sami elite in a policy of citizenship loyal to the "host country".

Reflecting the international rise of the indigenous people’s movement in the late 20th century, the Sami nationalist movement became radicalized. Lending from the Western’s one could say that the wise old chiefs and sachems (holy wise men among some Native American tribes) had to give way to the restless young braves. The demand became "Sami land to Sami people". The thesis was that in the lost golden age all land had been owned collectively by the Sami villages. This, however, is contrary to facts. Sami land ownership had been private; the village had only been made responsible as a collective for paying the taxes for the private lands to the Crown

For some decades the Sami in of Finland have been represented through Saamelaiskäräjät (Sami Parliament). The law defines the Sami parliament as a body for "cultural autonomy", or "culture self governance", and for representation of the Sami. The Sami parliament of Finland has de facto widened and deepened its mandate as universal and sole political speaker for all Sami in Finland to cover first and foremost the demands for "returning the Sami land to the Sami" and to strengthen the co-operation of the Sami across the Nordic borders, interpreting the Sami as a people in the sense of international law, with the right to its own country, Sapmi.

The Sami parliament is the main actor behind the demands that Finland should ratify ILO-convention No. 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples without any further investigation of the prerequisites and consequences. It has also demanded and procured a Nordic Sami convention.

The Sami parliament of Finland is, however, burdened with some severe legitimacy problems combined with problems of discrimination. The body is dominated by descendants of Reindeer herder Sami, the majority of which immigrated to Finland from Sweden and Norway after the border closing of 1852. Mainly these families immigrated in the period from 1864 to about 1910. As it has been explained above, they immigrated with their immense herds of reindeer of up to 20 000 heads, after the pastures in Norway had been overgrazed. The newcomers settled on land already in use by the ancient indigenous Sami of Finnish Lapland.

The descendants of these latecomers today demand recognition as the only indigenous people of Finland, and refuse the real indigenous people these same rights, saying these are just descendants of some Finnish settlers, as they do not speak the Sami language as their first language.

ILO Convention 169 however does not demand that you master the language of an indigenous people to be counted as its member, but the Sami parliament wrongly demands this, in flagrant conflict with the convention of which’s ratification the Sami Parliament and the State of Finland first agreed some years ago. The parliament of Finland declined the government bill of ratification and the bill of changes to the law on the Sami parliament. The bills, having for goal to increase the status of the North Sami on the cost of the factually indigenous Sami, had been prepared totally ignoring the genuine indigenous Sami.

The real indigenous peoples of Finnish Lapland fulfill the criteria for an indigenous people as well, or better than the North Sami. The indigenous Sami descend from the people that has lived in the area as long any mans memory can tell, and long before that, probably over thousand years. They have records and deeds proofing that their private lands belong to them. These deeds stem from the process where they had their ancient rights to specific private lands transmuted to registered estates to protect them against fellow Sami and settlers from outside Lapland.

The latecomer Sami have deeds to the estates the Finnish state allotted to them mainly around 1920, as the state, expecting revenues, preferred the newcomers large-scale reindeer economy, and in later homestead gives. The descendants of the latecomers also have all rights they ever need for what they call traditional Sami economic activities, as reindeer herding and fishing. Among these rights is the right to herd reindeer on state land and private lands of others.

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This story is long and complicated, but simplifying it for the sake of shortness and at the risk of grossness one can say that North Sami activists in Finland, in alliance with the Skolt Sami, on false ethnonationalistic premises, demand the ratification of ILO-convention number 169 to reclaim land they say the Finnish state has taken from them. However, if a state ever has taken their land, they must seek it in Norway, the land of their ancestors. Saying this here does absolutely not express the idea, wish or suggestion they should return to Norway, only that they should limit their demands to what is righteous, fair and based on facts. If the state ever has taken land from the Sami in Finland, which can well be the case, it has taken it mainly from the Sami that have lived in Finland before and at the time for that land grab. And if it, or parts of it, should ever be given back, or handed over to all Sami, then this can and must not be done without including the heirs and descendants of the real indigenous Sami of Finland.

The coup attempt by the late comer Sami, and their ally, to falsely claim the status of the only indigenous people of Finland, and doing so robbing a great part of the genuine indigenous people of the same right and trying to make the Sami parliament, dominated by North sami, the collective overlords of all land i Lapland, is a gross violation of the human rights of the decendants of the indigenous Sami left outside the Sami parliament and thus without official Sami status, and it smells heavily of racism. Luckily this scam of historical dimensions has come to a point where the colorful bubble is about to blast, but it does not prevent the Sami parliament majority coalition to try the coup repeatedly with only slight modifications of tactics.

All in all there are many reasons to question if the ILO-convention 169 for the Protection of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples is needed in Finland at all, and if it is applicable to the conditions in Finland. The raison d’être of the convention is to protect indigenous and tribal people living in their old ways and having maintained at least some of their old institutions, which is not the case in Lapland. The convention is meant to rectify wrongs stemming from colonial oppression, but Finnish Lapland never saw full-fledged colonialism, only cultural dominance and integration. So why is the Sami parliament pressing for ratification of the ILO convention and the Nordic Sami convention, and at all costs clinging to their status as the sole representant of the sole indigenous people of Lapland? Why does The Sami Parliament not instead go in for recognizing the status as indigenous people of all the Sami in Finland, alos those now left without voting rights in the elections of the Sami Parliament? Until now the Sami parliament has declined all invitations to talks with the non-status Sami, that is, the Sami not registered as voters for the Sami parliament elections. The Supreme Administrative Court (KHO) of Finland has overturned decions by the Sami parliament and ordered about hundred, but not all, of the non-status Sapmi to be registered as voters. KHO has also turned down the Sami parliaments application that the Supreme Administrative Court would overrule its own ruling in a case where a few of these real indigenous Lapps where granted voting rights against the will of the Sami Thing. The parliament still ponders taking the case to some international courts and forums.

If the Sami parliament would get the ILO Convention 169 ratified according to its will, this would paradoxically result in internal colonial oppression in Lapland that has not seen it but as a bleak copy. If the Sami parliament would also succeed in preventing the real indigenous Sami from registering as voters, the modern, subarctic form of internal colonialism would be nearly complete, as it would also include flagrant racism.

Then, of course, there is the question what impact the ratification of convention 169 or the Nordic Sami convention would have on the social stability and future of Finnish Lapland, where the factually indigenous Sami, other Sami and inhabitants of other than Sami origin until now have lived peacefully together, sharing the same life, the same hardships, and same rights as humans and citizens.

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Now this was a long sermon. There can be more than one good solution to these problems. One solution might be a universal law for all indigenous groups, which in practice wold cover all Sapmi groups. The law would give the rules for how the state of Finland recognizes an indigenous group on factual (objective) grounds, after the group has declared that it identifies itself as indigenous. The law would provide each such group with an opportunity to consolidate itself legally by a formalized process, giving it an official autonomous status in the sphere of public law and permitting it to create a demoratic structure for its self governance. In concordance with international indigenous peoples law, like ILO169, these groups would be self governing in their internal affairs, they would choose their own members following their own criteria and procedures, they could be allotted parts of what the state now considers its own lands, these parts not covering the entire Lapland.

 law of this kind law would equally protect the rights of the North Sami, putting an end to their fear that the Supreme Aministrative Court decides over their head whom they must give membership. It would also put an end to the now prevailing praxis, where the North Sapmi, with their majority in the Sami parliament, decide who is a Sami and who is not, taking this decision not only for membership in theri own ethnic group, the North Sami, but for all other Sami groups as well.

All this, and other provisions in the law, in combination with increased, but not total, self governance for all of the province of Lapland, could lead to a better future for all groups, including all Sami, without regard to if their ancestors settled here a thousand or so years ago, or merely some 150 years ago.

After all, we are all created equal, and we shall not create nor tolerate laws or international conventions that create inequality.