Giuseppe is a visiting researcher and a member of the team “Northern Communities – Northern Possibilities”. His research focuses on the Sami people's rights, new ways of inclusion and participation in the management and exploitation of natural resources found in their lands.
My interest in the world of indigenous people and, in particular, to Sámi culture and lifestyle is somehow something that I cannot explain rationally, even to myself. Since the time that I was writing my first master’s thesis, I got interested in the particularly vulnerable groups, starting from the studies of the minorities in Europe. It was almost by chance that I discovered that we had an indigenous population in Europe (the Sámi), living in the Northern parts of Finland, Norway, Sweden and in the Kola Peninsula, in Russia.
From that moment, I started to do research about these people, I wrote my thesis in international law on the condition of indigenous people in the world and on the protection to which they are entitled according to international law, and I started dreaming to come to Northern Europe to meet Sámi and, perhaps, to study more deeply their condition.
This desire lead me to apply for the European Master Degree in Human Rights, to which I was finally accepted while I was studying English in UK. In September 2013 I started this new adventure that brought me to Finland in February 2014. I spent 6 months in Turku, at the Institute for Human Rights of Åbo Akademi University, writing my thesis titled “The legal position of Sami in the exploitation of mineral resources in Finland, Norway and Sweden”. It was during that period that I had the occasion to come for the first time in my life to Lapland! Furthermore, that was the time in which I for the first time in my life entered to the Arctic Centre (what a beautiful, as well as strange building I thought!), and visited Inari and the Sami Parliament and in which I met also for the very first time Sami people.
Well, I can easily say that it was the time in which I fell in love with Finland and I promised to myself that I would have to come back one day! And so, here we are! After having working in Luxembourg in a Development NGO and in Italy in a Refugee camp I had the great opportunity to come back to Finland …better to be in the Arctic Centre in Rovaniemi (many thanks to Tanja!).
I would like to carry out my PhD focusing on the threats to the traditional lifestyle that the Sámi are living on the daily basis. More precisely, I would like to explore the new ways of participation of Sami people in the decision making-process, especially when a decision would affect directly their life and the way in which they live. New inclusion schemes in the political life are needed in order to protect and fulfil the rights of the indigenous people all over the world and I think Northern Europe can really be the right place in which this new advancement for the conditions of indigenous people can be made!
