No Mine in Gallok

Description

”In March 2022 the Swedish government granted a British enterprise by the name of Beowulf Mining permission to pursue an open-cast mining operation in Gállok, in the heartland of Swedish-occupied Sápmi – an important development in a long and contested procedure towards a colonial land grab of historical significance. Ten years ago, in 2013, test drilling in Gállok spurred mounting resistance in the form of a road block and protest camp. On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of that event, and in the context of an increasing acuteness of the Gállok case, this booklet offers insight into the wider context of colonial exploitation and environmental devastation in the homeland of Northern Europe’s indigenous Sámi population within territory under Swedish dominion.

Through a series of articles and interviews, light is shed upon a range of interrelated topics covering the Gállok case, the history of the region, colonial and racist treatment of its Sámi inhabitants, the conversion of its boreal forests into coniferous cash crop plantations, the increasing burdens upon the reindeer herding culture, the questionable promises of a so-called Green Transition based on colonial land grabbing and environmental degradation, and issues related to the nature of capitalist civilization underlying all of the above. The booklet incorporates activist, local and Sámi voices as well as perspectives from scholars in the fields of technology, racism, water security, forest ecology and human ecology.

The Gállok case is about an open-cast iron mine in the heartland of Sámi reindeer herding. But in many ways, it is about much more than that.”