Sami. We exist. Part 2
This text is the second part of a story about how the indigenous people of the Kola Peninsula are losing their land, language, and people. We also discuss how the authorities' attempts to preserve their identity are labeled separatism. talked about in the first partThis discussion will focus on the economic assault on the Sami people. It will explore whether local residents can speak out against large companies' plans to expand production and deprive indigenous people of the opportunity to live their traditional lives. How authorities are devising ways to formally comply with the law while simultaneously disregarding people's rights. Valentina Sovkina's account doesn't refute a single document in the project. It raises a different question: what does it feel like to be invited to participate in a procedure whose outcome is predetermined?
Without the right to say no
The phone rings. Public hearings on the lithium project are in a week. Valentina Sovkina doesn't have time to read anything in advance: the invitation, as usual, came at the last minute, second-hand. But she goes anyway.
“Of course, I ran to these hearings,” she says, “at least by being present… I thought, I’ll listen, find out, see what’s possible there.
She had been attending these meetings for several years. A Sami and member of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Valentina has been involved for many years in what could be called Sami self-governance—conventions, elected bodies, language, and maps of traditional territories. She attended the consultations on the Kolmozerskoye deposit because she considered it her land, literally.
When I came to the hearing for the first time, they had already explained to me the main thing: the project will happen. We can discuss the road. We can discuss the reservoirs. We can discuss compensation. But the project itself will not be discussed.
What is Polar Lithium and why is it needed?
Lithium is a critical resource of the 21st century, essential for electronics, the chemical industry, aviation, and even the automotive industry. It is essential for batteries—from telephone batteries to electric vehicle batteries—and for the production of heat-resistant glass, lithium-based lubricants, and lightweight aircraft alloys. It is called the "new oil," as control over lithium reserves and processing largely determines the energy independence of countries and the dominance of green technologies in the market, just as hydrocarbons defined the global economy in the last century.
Over 80% of the world's lithium is mined in the salt flats of South America—the so-called "Lithium Triangle" of Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia—and from hard ores in Australia and China. Russia, which has historically relied entirely on imports, processes the raw material at plants in Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk.
After 2022, when the main lithium suppliers—Chile and Argentina—stopped exports to Russia due to sanctions, domestic lithium production became a state priority. The primary focus is on the Kolmozerskoye lithium deposit in the Murmansk region, the largest in Russia and one of the five largest lithium deposits in the world. Polar Lithium LLC, a joint venture between Norilsk Nickel and Rosatom, received a license to develop this deposit in 2023.
The Kolmozero development project is estimated to cost 91 billion rubles. According to geological surveys, approximately 1,5 million tons of lithium oxide equivalent can be extracted from the ore. The project is planned to produce 45 tons of lithium compounds per year, with full capacity expected to be reached by 2030. Open-pit mining is scheduled to commence in 2028, followed by the first stage of the processing plant.
What's the problem?
The Lovozero District, home to the Kolmozerskoye deposit, occupies a third of the Murmansk Region. This territory is home to the Sami people, who, according to the Charter of the Murmansk Region, are the only indigenous people of the Kola Peninsula. According to the 2020 census, there are 1550 Sami living in Russia, 860 of whom live in the village of Lovozero.
In the 1970s, due to the construction of new industrial plants and the expansion of military facilities in the Murmansk region, more than 30 settlements where the Sami constituted an ethnic majority were resettled, forcing residents to establish reindeer herding in new territories. It was precisely in these displaced areas that the Kolmozersky Project was unfolding.
Does he take into account the interests of the indigenous Sami? To what extent do Polar Lithium care about their problems? According to Valentina Sovkina, the tone of the industrialists' conversations with the locals is as follows:
Even if you disagree, we will, of course, talk to you. We will, of course, take all your opinions into account; we will hold hearings, we will hold meetings. But the project—it will be there, that's all.
SPOS and proposals
In short, and without legal jargon, federal law grants indigenous peoples the right to participate in decisions regarding their land. The license to develop the deposit, which Polar Lithium received in 2023, mentions this right and obligates the company to protect the habitat and pay for damages.
But the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples enshrines the principle of FPIC—free, prior, and informed consent. This is a right of indigenous peoples. to give or not to give consent to any industrial, infrastructure, or raw materials projects affecting their traditional territories, resources, and way of life. This principle is not explicitly stated in Russian law. Polar Lithium's license also contains no procedure for obtaining such consent. The company promised to obtain it voluntarily, beyond legal requirements.
A logical question arises: if Russian legislation does not require obtaining FPOS, why did the company announce its intention to apply it at all?
The answer likely stems from the fact that for modern large-scale raw materials projects, engagement with indigenous peoples has long been part of corporate standards and international business practices. Therefore, the question is no longer so much whether there is a legal obligation, but rather whether the procedure complies with the principles the company has publicly stated as guiding its work.
At first glance, the project has significant work with indigenous peoples. Consultations with the Sami, Komi, and Nenets began in June 2022, before the license was granted. The project has a separate, beautiful Badageoni website, where the materials of the negotiations are posted. In 2023, a meeting was held ethnological examination With the participation of scientists from St. Petersburg State University, the Kola Science Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow State University, the Russian Ethnographic Museum, and land surveyors. If we stop here, the picture looks pretty good.
The documents even outline a complaints mechanism. But a complaint and consent are different things. A complaint is a response to something that has already happened. Consent must be obtained before a decision is made. And if complaints can only be made to the company itself, that's a matter of reputational concerns, not independent protection of the right to influence the project.
Consent to what?
Developing the deposit will, of course, require the construction of major infrastructure—roads, reservoirs, and much more. This alone poses a threat to reindeer herding.
At a meeting between local residents and industrialists in Lovozero in June 2022, a representative of the Tundra reindeer herding cooperative noted that the deposit is located on land leased by the cooperative, where reindeer herding camps and herds graze. "If a railway or road is built to Apatity, reindeer herding in this area will end." Reindeer herder Ivan Terentyev added that the tundra survived precisely because there were no roads there: "It was a wild place. The only way to get there was by helicopter or all-terrain vehicles." The addition of any paved road would mean an uncontrolled influx of hunters, tourists, and poachers, which the handful of reindeer herders could not physically cope with.
Valentina Sovkina says that both at meetings and in person, the company's message was the same: "Well, you understand its importance for the country." Further assurances followed: if necessary, we'll "move the road," reinforce the reservoirs, and apply modern technologies. But the framework remained unchanged. The discussion focused on the method, not the actual development—which is precisely what FPOS requires.
Polar Lithium CEO Igor Demidov said the company began reconnaissance of the deposit as early as mid-2022, before receiving the license and even before the auction for the site was announced, setting up a camp near the deposit. The license was received on February 21, 2023, and the next day, according to Demidov, geological exploration began: equipment was deployed early, along the winter road, "to avoid wasting the winter season." The company itself describes these efforts as a model of efficiency, but this pace leaves little opportunity for the full implementation of the FPIC principle. According to Sovkina, meetings were announced at best a week in advance, and more often, only those "specifically recommended to attend" were invited. When participants asked to plan at least a month in advance, they were told that the organizers "also had their own deadlines," business trips, and busy schedules. "This, of course, was a simple excuse," says Sovkina: public hearings, like any meeting, are planned in advance.
Governor Andrei Chibis and Igor Demidov signed the project agreement back in June 2023 at a forum in St. Petersburg, and the Sami were not a party to it. In other words, the right to participate is enshrined at the very top, but at the level where territories and funding are discussed, there's not a single line about this right. And who is responsible for verifying that the promised consent has actually been received is also unclear.
Struggle within the community
The most difficult part of our conversation with Valentina wasn't about the development of the field, but about the rift within the Sami community itself. Outside the Kola Peninsula, this is almost unknown, and without it, it's impossible to understand who has the right to negotiate with the company.
Back in 2008, the Sami of the Kola Peninsula held a congress and decided to create their own elected body—independent, and accountable, according to Sovkina, only to the people, not to the government or the Duma. It was later named "Kuelnegk nyoark Sām Sobbar" (Assembly of the Sami of the Kola Peninsula). Valentina was elected its chairperson, and vice-chairperson— Andrey Danilov.
In total, three Sami representative bodies were created, and each new structure, says Danilov, became increasingly controlled by the state.
The last of these is the Council of Representatives of Indigenous Minorities of the North under the Government of the Murmansk Region. Formally, it is also the voice of indigenous peoples. In essence, says Valentina Sovkina, it is a much more convenient body: it meets a couple of times a year according to a schedule, with pre-determined decisions. "It's a very loyal, tame council that carries out what it's advised to do."
So it turned out that one community has two representative bodies. One is elected and independent. The other is in power. For seventeen years, a quiet struggle has been going on between them.
I realized that we have been fighting within the community for seventeen years.
In the Polar Lithium situation, this struggle ceases to be an internal affair for the Sami. To sign the company's agreement with the indigenous people, a representative of the latter is needed. In February 2025, at a meeting of the working group—what Sovkina called "tame"—the council was almost fully present. She considered the meaning of this to be clear: they were trying to make the council a signatory to the FPIC, the party that would formally agree on behalf of the entire people.
This is an elected organization, with a very minimal representation percentage. It is not the voice of the entire people, and they have no right to sign anything without our consent.
"You're not there."
It's telling that even at the very first consultation in June 2022, Norilsk Nickel representative Vasily Zakharov acknowledged that communication hadn't quite begun as expected: "Perhaps it wasn't quite right that [local residents] learned about the project from the media. Perhaps we should have held some preliminary consultations. But that's how it turned out." Thus, the company itself, at the outset of the process, recognized a gap between how engagement with indigenous peoples should look and how it actually played out.
Few people attended the meetings, says Sovkina. Local residents often simply sat as listeners and agreed with the company's arguments. The deposit is located far from the nearest villages—100–150 kilometers away. For many, it's just an abstraction: they'll scare the reindeer, they'll move the bases. "It's not that they don't understand the consequences; maybe they do. But they don't see any way to defend it." Sovkina calls this a habit of helplessness: "We've been taught that we can't do without them."
Moreover, Valentina says, there are more mundane reasons for the locals' agreement: "We have virtually no employment, particularly among the indigenous population. That is, the percentage [of unemployed] is higher among the Sami." And those who do have jobs are bound by them.
If you start to get too vocal, you'll get a warning at work: don't meddle in things you're not wanted to, because you're working and getting government funding. And the person thinks, "Well, yeah, where else am I going to go?"
Sovkina's conclusion, expressed almost without bitterness, is that the community is surrendering without a fight because the conditions for it have been created in advance—reindeer herders' lives are not being improved, families are not being allowed to live in the tundra. The tundra is becoming empty. And this, she believes, is convenient: so that later they can say, "But you're not there."
Sovkina herself never received a decision on the project. One day, she was detained at the border for an "interview." They asked her about her education, her travels, and the organizations she had worked with. And the final question—and, as she immediately realized, the most important one—was: "What is your attitude toward Norilsk Nickel?" She replied, "I'm against them coming to our land, and I'll say so everywhere." In December 2025, FSB officers searched Valentina's home, confiscating her phones and computers. A few days later, she left Russia.
The history of the Kolmozersky project leaves open a question that extends far beyond the Kola Peninsula. If a company voluntarily declares the application of the FPIC principle, by what criteria can one assess whether this principle has been implemented? And who has the authority to make such an assessment?
