LAST YOIK IN SAAMI FORESTS

Synopsis

The heavy cuttings in forests of Finnish Lapland, even in indigenous Saami peoples home area have continued last fifty years.

The conflict between forestry and nature conservation has been constant during last 20 years, when this invasion has reached more and more of the last remaining wildernesses.

The traditional,  freely grazing reindeer herding,  dependent of the old growth forests, has been loosing its resources but not any complaint or protests has managed to strop the process.

In spring 2005 Saami reindeer herders made an alliance with Greenpeace which established it Forest Rescue Station in the wilderness of Inari. The international pressure mobilized by Greenpeace made multinational Finnish forest company,  Stora Enso to stop buying the wood from conflict areas. And so Finnish state owned company Metsähallitus has stop the cuttings.

The situation gets even more dramatic when loggers party builds up their own camp, "Antiterror infocamp" nearby Greenpeace forest station. People from that camp start constant threatening and noisy disturbing so that Greenpeace campers cannot have rest not in the nights or not in the days.

In May Greenpeace decides to remove the camp, when the main aim, logging break has been achieved. Logging break does not continue too long. Stora Enso announced in July 2005 to start again buying wood from Metsähallitus, from the conflict forest. Metsähallitus starts logging in August.

Kalevi Paadar, a saami reindeer herder from village of Nellim, makes with his brothers a complaint to UN Human rights commission.  They claim that loggings in their home village violate their right continue traditional way of reindeer herding based on free grazing. UN asks Finland to stop cuttings.

The cutting break continues more than a year until in May 2007 Metsähallitus starts again logging,  this time in the wilderness of Kessi.

No one of the big pulp and paper companies admits to be the buyer and in July it is seen that the buyer is the local  heating energy company, Inergia.

In the epiloque of the documentary  Pekka Aikio, the chair on Saami Parliament, has to answer a question: What is all this about that the Finnish state and the Inari county are burning down the woods of the Saami land.

The documentary follows the conflict and its reasons and backgrounds but also seeks the alternatives. What kind of civil cultural alternatives exists and what are the possibilities based on the special quality of Lappish wood? You could think that it is possible to find for this many hundred of years old timber some more profitable ways of use than pulping, burning or producing for railway stocks.