The continuous process of recognition and implementation of the Sami people's right to self-determination
This paper explores the status of the recognition and implementation of the Sami people's right to self-determination. The Sami are the indigenous people of Finland, Norway, Sweden and the Kola Peninsula in the north-western region of Russia. They are one people residing across national borders, enjoying a distinctive identity, language, history, culture and social structure, as well as unique traditions, livelihoods and aspirations. Their distinctiveness has given rise to their claim to self-determination based on conventional principles and instruments of international law. But where their right to self-determination has been gradually recognized by Finland, Norway and Sweden, Russia remains reluctant. And where Sami self-determination has been implemented through indigenous Sami parliaments, in Nordic states, the process of recognizing and implementing their right within these states has only taken place incrementally within existing democratic and constitutional mechanisms. It is a continuous process without a predefined outcome.
Your language or ours? Inclusion and exclusion of non-indigenous majorities in Māori and Sámi language revitalization policy
Since the second half of the twentieth century, post-colonial governments have commonly sought to revitalize the indigenous languages their imperialist predecessors hoped to eradicate. Although the impetus to revitalize is shared, the question of excluding or including the non-indigenous majority in the revitalization process, and encouraging them to become new speakers of the language, is a matter of politics and ideology. This paper draws on neotraditionalism and biculturalism as ideological premises in language revitalization policy to compare and contrast the nature and experiences of government policy in New Zealand and Norway as two such examples. In doing so, the paper sees neotraditionalism and biculturalism as ends of an ideological continuum that can plot policy frameworks and their changes. It finds, however, that neither has resulted in greater language revitalization and that both countries, and especially New Zealand, have flirted with a shift on the ideological continuum. Nonetheless, it appears that New Zealand's biculturalist approach has normalized the indigenous language to the extent its revitalization enjoys more support from the non-indigenous polity than in neotraditionalist Norway, where Sámi languages and policy are territorialized and invisible to most Norwegians.
Hill country sheep production. I. The influence of age, flock, and year on some components of reproduction rate in Romney and Border Leicester × Romney ewes.
Data from 7,091 straightbred Romney and Border Leicester × Romney ewes grazed at the Whatawhata Hill Country Research Station over the period 1959 to 1967 have been used to obtain estimates of flock and age-of-ewe effects on reproduction rate and its components and of year-to-year variation. The ewes were from six groups: a Romney control (RCR) flock, a Romney flock in which ewes were mated either to Romney (RER) or to Border Leicester rams (REB), and flocks of first-cross (F1), second-cross (F2), and third-cross (F3) Border Leicester × Romney ewes mated to first-cross Border Leicester × Romney rams. The ewes' ages at lambing varied from 2 to 5 years and no selection was practised. The ratio of number of lambs weaned per ewe present at lambing increased from the RCR (0.84) to the F1 (1.07), then declined with interbreeding to the F2 (0.92) and further to the F3 (0.87) ewes. Similar changes were evident for the percentage of ewes lambing, of multiple births, and of lambs surviving to weaning. Over...