Clouds, setting

Music

01.00.00

sun, map of Scandinavia, people in boat,

Holmes:  It's late July, and almost midnight.  In less than three hours, the sun will rise again.

Half way up the long chain of mountains that forms the frontier with Norway, lies the Swedish county of Harjedalen.  But it's a border zone in a more fundamental way than that.

It's the southernmost stronghold of the Saami people, who've lived in the Scandinavian mountains time out of mind.

Dissolve into b/w photos of reindeer and herders

Hunters, fisher people, above all reindeer herders - nomads who moved into northern Scandinavia from Asia at the end of the last ice age and made their way slowly south.

Music

Intv with man outside tent

Rensberg:  I don't know exactly when they came, but as long as I know anything about reindeer herding and my fore-fathers have existed here.

01.01.07

Holmes:  Who do you think really owns this land?  Is it Saami land?

Rensberg:  This here is Saami land, yes.  There's no one else who could be its owner.

Band coming out

Music

of church, people

walking out of church, pan down church

Holmes:  But in the eyes of the Swedish state, the Saami nomads are living on Crown land.  The Swedes too are an ancient people, with an intact culture that goes back to long before Christian times.

01.01.38

Music

Holmes:  Farmers and foresters, they followed the retreating ice northward into Scandinavia from Europe.

They planted their wooden villages in the forests of Harjedalen hundreds of years ago and in summer drove their cows and goats up into the mountain pastures.

Intv with man with white hair

Matensson:  The Saami call themselves 'indigenous people' in a way which I don't accept.  Who the original people of Harjedalen were, no one knows any more.  No one can claim that today.

01.02.20

People on

Music and Horse hooves

*******

For Edvin Rensberg, like most Saami, reindeer herding is more than just a living.  And calf-marking is one of the big events in the annual calendar.

CU deer running out gate, deer running to herd

His surname in Swedish means simply reindeer mountain and his empathy for this wild and spectacular country is strikingly similar to the Australian aboriginal attitude to land.

Intv with man outside tent

Super:

EDVIN RENSBERG

Tannas Saami Community

Rensberg:  People talk about an untouched wilderness but 'wilderness' is a concept we Saami have never understood because we have always worked in these mountains and this for us is a 'human' landscape and not a wilderness at all. 

01.04.50

Reindeer and the Saami belong to this environment and ought to be here.

Mountains, zoom out to reindeer, reindeer with numbers walking along

Holmes:  Yet there's a chance that neither Saami nor reindeer may be here much longer.  The size of the Saami's herds is theoretically controlled by the Swedish government.  But many believe that in recent years they've been allowed to grow too large.

01.05.29

It's not so much of a problem in the summer, when the reindeer graze in the state-owned mountains.

But when winter comes, they'll go down to the valleys to paw through the snow for lichens on the forest floor and that's where the real problems start.

Forest, pan to Holmes walking with two men

Because a lot of the forest belongs to private landowners like Karl-Erik Matensson and his friend Per Nordlinder.  And they claim that the effect the reindeer on their livelihood is becoming too much to bear.

01.06.05

Nearly twenty years ago, Matensson clear felled a part of his land.  It should now be covered in healthy, self-seeded young trees.  Instead, much of it's becoming a desert.

Holmes walking with two men, one of them speaking, pan of forest and denuded land

Matensson:  Up here on the higher ground the snow doesn't get so deep and as a result the area is easily damaged by all the reindeer trampling.

01.06.32

Holmes:  Was this area felled at the same time as where those big trees are over there?

Matensson:  Yes, at the same time ...  same time - but there's more grazing pressure here.  Over there we've disturbed them because it's nearer the house.

Holmes squatting on ground talking with two men

Holmes:  What about this moss here?  It looks very short, should it be looking like this?

Matensson:  Yes it's been worn down.  Twenty years ago it was this high and kept moisture in the ground in a way which it can't today.  Today it's becoming a tundra here - you can see these cracks appearing.

Car pulling up, Holmes getting out

Holmes:  Just off the main road to Vemdalen, the Swedish Department of Roads has a small depot in the forest, to store its road signs and snow-ploughs.

01.07.19

Holmes walks into shot and speaks to camera

Super:

JONATHAN HOLMES

Holmes to camera:  The depot has been surrounded by this fence for about twenty years and inside it you can see the way the reindeer moss ought to look. 

CU of moss, Holmes speaking to camera

It covers the whole of the forest floor, it's about ten centimetres deep and underneath if I put my hand in here, it's nice and moist.  I can feel the moisture down there.

On the other side of fence there's a dramatic contrast - there's virtually no reindeer moss at all and the ground is cracked and dry.

Now some people have argued that the problem of reindeer moss in these forests is caused by acid rain.  But there's only one thing that this fence is keeping out and that's reindeer.

People watching

Clapping

01.08.10

through binoculars

reindeer, people watching

Holmes:  The members of the Tannas Saami community, has reached the critical point in the calf-marking process.  They're studying the distinctive owner's mark cut into each adult female reindeer's ear and noting the number carried by her calf.

Chairman Edvin Rensberg has got little time now or at all for that matter for the concerns of landowners like Karl-Erik Matensson.

People on hill, reindeer

Rensberg:  In my view the issues the landowners raise are very exaggerated.  For the most part they've created these problems themselves. 

01.08.38

Intv with man (Rensberg) outside tent

What they do these days is clear-fell large areas and then plant new trees which then have to be left completely undisturbed. 

But where in a natural forest environment would you find whole square kilometres containing only trees this high?  It's an unnatural process really.

Holmes walking away with two men

Holmes:  But for the landowners, it's simply a question of money - the Saami are making it and they are losing it.

01.09.24

Holmes squatting on ground, talking with two men

Nordlinder:  I can't go to the Saami and say 'I want a thousand reindeer so I can slaughter and sell them because I need to make money for an investment.' 

They wouldn't accept that.  So why must I accept damage to property that I own and pay tax on and manage?

Man rolling fencing, removing fencing from poles

Holmes:  For Saami activist Olof Johansson, calf-marking is already over for this year.  But the struggle to preserve his people's way of life goes on all year, every year.

01.09.56

As he sees it, too, the issue is fundamentally about who owns the land.

Johansson:  I can't understand why people that move up to these areas, just a couple of hundred years ago - they own the land but we that have been living here for hundreds or maybe thousands of years, we don't own it.

Intv with man (Johansson) with light T-shirt on

It's very very often the same situation, the indigenous people don't own the land.

Johansson with dog, walking up to house, on computer

Holmes:  Johannson lives alone in the mountains with only his dog Ulle for company.  He's a dedicated man.

Like most southern Saami, he has a Swedish name and never learned the Saami language.  But it's the Saami not the Swedish flag that flies in his front yard.

Johansson is no hermit.  He's well plugged in to the world wide network of aboriginal activists.  He's been to Rio and Geneva to lobby for Saami rights.  But it's in the Swedish courts that the real struggle is being waged.

01.11.02

Intv with man (Johansson) with light T-shirt on

Johansson:  The reindeer law says that we are allowed to be there in our traditional areas in winter time even on private land.  But it doesn't point out exactly where so any landowner can go to court and try to make it impossible for us to have our reindeers there.

01.11.18

Two men looking at books, house exterior

Holmes:  And that's exactly what Karl-Erik Matensson, Per Nordlinder, and seven hundred of their fellow private landowners have done.

01.11.44

And furthermore, they've won.  The district court has ruled that the Saami have no general right to graze their reindeer on private land without permission or fee.

Outside of house

If the appeal court upholds that decision the landowners are determined to impose some rules on the Saami.

Intv with man with striped shirt

Super:

PER NORDLINDER

Landowner

Nordlinder:  But we can't live with people who say, 'We have rights, we can do exactly as we like.'  That doesn't work in today's society.

01.12.13

Holmes with two men at table looking at books

Holmes:  The landowners insist that the Saami will have to pay grazing fees and compensation for damage to the forests.

Intv with man (Johannson) with light T-shirt on

Johansson:  I think it could be so expensive so it will, even then it will destroy the possibility for us to go on with our reindeer herding.

01.12.38

Band singing and

Music

01.12.48

playing, people dancing

Holmes:  Change the music a bit and it could be a barn dance in any small outback community in Australia.  And the similarities go deeper.

There's the same reluctant acknowledgment that in the past, the indigenous people were ill-used - together with an injured sense that today's Saami are a privileged and cosseted minority.

Voxpops - man with blue shirt and hat

Man:  We landowners have to obey the law.

pan to woman next

to him

Young Woman:  They should do that as well then.  It should be no different for them than for us if they have land here, they should obey the law to.

Band playing

Music

Kid watching reindeer, people marking deer

Holmes:  But in Sweden, unlike Australia, it's the indigenous people who are the pastoralists - and through their reindeer they've been able to maintain not just a living, but an entire way of life.

01.13.54

For Edvin Rensberg and the Tannas community, the climax of the morning's work has come.

Woman reading off sheet, woman with

Woman:  One hundred and seventy-seven, Edvin.

deer

Holmes:  The calves have again been separated from the adults.  Now, one by one, they're hauled out of the pen and the agreed owner's name is called out.

Man cutting ear of reindeer

No fancy high-tech methods here - the owner's mark is sliced into the calf's ear with a traditional Saami knife - a technique that's been used for centuries.

It looks gruesome, but there's no blood and apparently no pain.

There's another major difference between the Saamis' situation and aboriginal Australians.  here, the courts have found against the existence of traditional land rights the Saami thought were secure - and that could endanger the viability of their entire culture.

Intv with man (Rensberg) outside of tent

Rensberg:  If the appeal court upholds the judgment of the district court, it will be the end of reindeer herding here in Harjedalen.  Because without these winter feeding areas, it's impossible for reindeer herding to survive.

01.15.20

Man with dog and herd of reindeer, reindeer running

Holmes:  For this herd at least, calf marking is over.  They're released to the freedom of the summer hills and winter forests.

01.15.37

But it's a limited freedom these days, hemmed in by frontiers and boundaries, titles and claims that the reindeer know nothing about.

Soon they may run out of room completely.