ABSTRACT
The Kola Sámi are an Indigenous group with an estimated total population of 1,599 people, who live on the territory of Kola Peninsula in Northwest Russia. In contrast to their counterparts in Scandinavia, the Kola Sámi have now lived in an urban environment for more than 50 years. The Sámi in Russia do not live in their traditional villages because they were closed as a result of the policies of collectivization and economic centralization from the 1930s to the 1970s, the years when the Sámi people were forcibly removed from their traditional territories. The forced relocations were by far the most tragic and dramatic changes to be experienced in the lives of Sámi community members in Russia during the twentieth century. The experiences of relocated community members, as a rule, has generally been glossed over by scientific and media sources. In this chapter I will concentrate on how the relocations were carried out and describe the effects of those measures on the community life of the Kola Sámi.
