he stirring words of Finlandia, Sibelius’s 1899 hymn to his country’s independence movement, praise a people in the midst of casting off “oppression’s yoke” after more than five centuries of subjugation by the Swedes and the Russians.
Today, however, the Finns are coming to a reckoning with their own little-known history as oppressors.
From the 16th century to the 1960s, the indigenous Sami people of northern Scandinavia were subjected to a systematic campaign of forced assimilation designed to eradicate their languages, culture and ancient shamanistic religion.
Their sacred places were destroyed, their land was confiscated, their political systems were dismantled and their children were taken away to boarding schools.
Some were exhibited in “human zoos” as far afield as Hamburg and thousands of others
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