Hålogalandsallmenningen is the proposed name for the organization which is expected to manage about 50% of the land and inland water resources in the counties of

Troms Troms (; ; ; ) is a Counties of Norway, county in northern Norway. It borders Finnmark county to the northeast and Nordland county in the southwest. Norrbotten Län in Sweden is located to the south and further southeast is a shorter border with ...

and

Nordland Nordland (; , , , ) is one of the three northernmost Counties of Norway, counties in Norway in the Northern Norway region, bordering Troms in the north, Trøndelag in the south, Norrbotten County in Sweden to the east, Västerbotten County to t ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

. It expected that the members in the board of directors will be elected from the ''County Council of Troms'', the ''County Council'' of Norland, and the

Sami Parliament of Norway Acronyms * SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft * Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company * South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise ...

. A similar organization, the Finnmark Estate, is already established in the county of

Finnmark Finnmark (; ; ; ; ) is a counties of Norway, county in northern Norway. By land, it borders Troms county to the west, Finland's Lapland (Finland), Lapland region to the south, and Russia's Murmansk Oblast to the east, and by water, the Norweg ...

Background

The background for the Finnmark Act is the Sámi people's fight for their rights to manage their land and culture. In 1978 the

Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate The Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate ( or NVE) is a Norwegian government agency established in 1921. It is under the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy and regulates the country's water resources and energy supply. Its mandate in ...

published a plan that called for the construction of a dam and hydroelectric power plant that would create an artificial lake and inundate the

Sami Acronyms * SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft * Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company * South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise ne ...

village of

Máze , , or is a village in Kautokeino Municipality in Finnmark county, Norway. The village is located along the river Kautokeinoelva, a tributary of the Alta river. about south of the town of Alta and about 60 kilometres north of the village of ...

. This plan was met by a strong opposition from the Sámi, and resulted in the

Alta controversy The Alta conflict or Alta controversy was a series of protests in Norway in the late 1970s and early 1980s against the construction of a hydroelectric power plant on the Alta River in Finnmark, Northern Norway. Timeline *Inhabitants of the vil ...

. As a result of the controversy, the Norwegian government held meetings in 1980 and 1981 with a Sámi delegation appointed by the Norwegian Sámi Association, the

Sámi Reindeer Herders’ Association of Norway Acronyms * SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft * Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company * South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise ...

and the Norwegian Sámi Council. The meetings resulted in the establishment of the ''Sámi Rights Committee'' addressing Sámi legal relations, that proposed among other things the establishing the Sami Parliament, and finally the adoption of the Finnmark Act in 2005. The Sámi rights to lands, waters and resources were strengthened after 1990, when Norway recognized the Sámi as an

indigenous people There is no generally accepted definition of Indigenous peoples, although in the 21st century the focus has been on self-identification, cultural difference from other groups in a state, a special relationship with their traditional territ ...

by adapting the

ILO convention 169 The Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 is an International Labour Organization List of International Labour Organization Conventions, Convention, also known as ILO Convention 169, or C169. It is the major Contract, binding Internation ...

concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries. The convention states that rights for the indigenous peoples to land and natural resources are recognized as central for their material and cultural survival. In addition, indigenous peoples should be entitled to exercise control over, and manage, their own institutions, ways of life and economic development in order to maintain and develop their identities, languages and religions, within the framework of the States in which they live. In 2001 a committee known as ''Samerettsutvalget'' Samerettsutvalget - regjeringen.no
/ref> was established to evaluate the Sámi rights to lands, waters and resources in Troms and Norland. The committee finished its work in 2007, and proposed to establish Hålogalandsallmenningen.

References

Sámi in Norway Troms Nordland {{Norway-org-stub