No mine in Gallok

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 Gallok, in the heartland of Swedish occupied Sapmi – 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 Gallok 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 Gallok case, this book offers insight into the wider context of colonial exploitation and environmental devastation in the homeland of Northern Europe’s indigenous Sami population within territory under Swedish dominion. Through a series of articles and interviews, light is is shed upon a range of interrelated topics covering the Gallok case, the history of the region, colonial and racist treatment of its Sami inhabitants, the conversion of its northern 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 book incorporates activist, local and Sami voices aswell as perspectives from scholars in the fields of technology, racism, water security, forest ecology and human ecology. The Gallok case is about an open-cast iron mine in the heartland of Sami reindeer herding. But in many ways, it is about much more than that. Beautifully illustrated and riso-printed.