Alta controversy


The Alta conflict or Alta controversy refers to a series of massive protests in Norway in the late 1970s and early 1980s concerning the construction of a hydroelectric power plant in the Alta river in Finnmark, Northern Norway.

Timeline

The background for the controversy was a published plan by the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate that called for the construction of a dam and hydroelectric power plant that would create an artificial lake and inundate the Sami village of Máze. After the initial plan met political resistance, a less ambitious project was proposed that would cause less displacement of Sami residents and less disruption for reindeer migration and wild salmon fishing.
On July 12, 1978, the popular movement against development of the Alta-Kautokeino waterway was founded, creating an organizational platform for first opposing and then resisting construction work. This group and others filed for an injunction in Norwegian courts against the Norwegian government to prevent construction from beginning.
In the fall of 1979, as construction was ready to start, protesters performed two acts of civil disobedience: at the construction site itself at Stilla, activists sat down on the ground and blocked the machines, and at the same time, Sami activists began a hunger strike outside the Norwegian parliament.
Documents that have since been declassified, show that the government planned to use military forces as logistical support for police authorities in their efforts to stop the protests.
The prime minister at the time, Odvar Nordli, pre-empted such an escalation by promising a review of the parliament's decision, but the Norwegian parliament subsequently confirmed its decision to dam the river. More than one thousand protesters chained themselves to the site when the work started again in January 1981. The police responded with large forces; at one point 10% of all Norwegian police officers were stationed in Alta. The protesters were forcibly removed by police.
For the first time since World War II, Norwegians were arrested and charged with violating laws against rioting. The central organizations for the Sami people discontinued all cooperation with the Norwegian government. Two Sami women even travelled to Rome to petition the Pope.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the government in early 1982, at which point organized opposition to the power plant ceased, and construction of the Alta Hydroelectric Power Station was completed by 1987.

Legacy

As the first serious political upheaval since the debate about Norwegian EC membership in 1972, the Alta controversy was important in several ways:
The NGO organised the opposition against the construction in the Alta controversy, and had at the most 20,000 members. Of these 10,000 actively participated in demonstrations, including the Stilla March. The organisation functioned as a cooperation between environmentalists and Sami activists, and not only succeeded at putting focus on environmental issues but also on Sami rights.
After their acts of civil disobedience, the four leaders, Alfred Nilsen, Tore Bongo, Svein Suhr and Per Flatberg, were sentenced for encouraging illegal acts.
La Elva Leve! was a 1980 docudrama inspired by the events of the Alta protests.
In 2014 "in one of the scenes of the Donald Duck Christmas story, mining activists—clad in gákti—and a chain gang show up. Associations to the Alta conflict of the 70s and 80s, where there was great resistance to the building of a dam on the Alta River, are clear", according to NRK. A documentary film Tidsvitne: Alta-kampen was produced by NRK.
A subplot in the 2019 animated musical film Frozen II where a dam built on tribal land by King Runeard, Elsa and Anna's grandfather, alludes to the Alta controversy. Runeard had the dam built ostensibly as a gift to the Northuldrans, a fictional tribe inspired by the Sámi people, but was actually a means to further subjugate the tribe whom the king distrusted for their reliance on magic.

Literature