Eugenics, Admixture, and Multiculturalism in Twentieth-Century Northern Sweden: Contesting Disability and Sámi Genocide

Posted in Articles, Europe, History, Literary/Artistic Criticism on 2022-02-01 18:53Z by Steven

Eugenics, Admixture, and Multiculturalism in Twentieth-Century Northern Sweden: Contesting Disability and Sámi Genocide

Terry-Lee Marttinen, Independent Researcher/Writer

Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies
February 2022
28 pages
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.32472.37125

This article examines twentieth-century northern Swedish geographical isolate studies in Norrbotten Province involving Torne-Finns and northern Sámi, who have historically shared pronatalist Laestadian religious beliefs pathologized by mainstream eugenicists. Deemed a sign of religious fanaticism, Laestadianism was associated with the stigmatization of Torne-Finns and Sámi people and conceptualized as an early sign of schizophrenia. Geneticists, as an outgrowth of early twentieth-century eugenics, structured schizophrenia as a genetic disease caused by first-cousin marriage. These consanguineous marriages, which were reported as prevalent in Torne-Finn and Sámi reindeer-herding communities practicing Laestadianism, legitimated race-based sterilization of psychitrized Tornedalian and Sámi women. Similarly, the Swedish State Institute for Race Biology, established in 1922 by Herman Lundborg, advanced reorganizing race along family lines and populations, which supported gendered disability and Sámi genocide. Torne-Finn, as well as Sámi, religious minority women, who were sterilized at first admission to psychiatric facilities, require redress for colonial violence. Current academic and direct-to-consumer admixture research on Finnish and Sámi peoples is recognized as upholding colonial logics of difference in Swedish multicultural policies. This, in turn, results in ongoing gendered genocide. It is concluded that in a radical break from eugenic theories, major psychoses associated with common infections lie in the neglected half of the human genome rather than according to classical genetic rules.

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