“There is so much intrusion from all sides and corners,” a Sami reindeer herder tells me, reacting to a government decision to grant a mining permit in Gállok in the Sápmi region in Sweden’s far north.

Sápmi is the communal land of the Indigenous Sami people. Their land ranges through northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia.

This particular reindeer herding community in Sápmi has already been affected by expansion of huge levels of industry related to forestry and hydropower. And now there’s a planned iron ore project. A new mine and its associated infrastructure will place additional pressures on grazing lands and migratory routes.

The mining plans are a sign that history is repeating itself, another reindeer herder tells me. It is important to resist “for myself and for my children and everyone who comes after us who wants to live the life that I have lived”.

The plans to bring more industry into these lands are symbolic of how the Sami way of life has been ignored in the past. Over hundreds of years Sweden has seized land and resources in Sápmi.

Indigenous Sami land has historically, and continues to be, framed as the “land of the future”, a space that is presented as open for extraction and can be sacrificed for national development.

Industries such as mining, forestry, energy production, land intense green industry projects, and infrastructure expansion place cumulative pressure on Sami lands. In addition, the way that Sami people use land is also affected by climate change. As snow and weather conditions change, there is reduced access to pastures and lichen upon which reindeer feed.

Mining operations have been shown to displace livelihoods such as Sami reindeer herding, by cutting off animal migration routes and viable grazing lands. This threatens Indigenous cultural survival.

For instance, a freight train carrying ore that runs across reindeers’ west-east migration may pose risks to their lives or lead them away from their pastures. As a result, the land where the reindeer can graze is reduced and less accessible.

The benefits of mining to those who live in the north, where much of Swedish mining is located, is minimal. Locals report frustration about decades of failed promises that they will see significant local development from mining. They note that prominent mining towns such as Kiruna have had mines for generations in the hope of municipal development, but still do not have sufficient social service provisions. For instance, they lack access to maternity wards and other healthcare services.

Meanwhile, land disappears due to industrial expansion. For instance, in Malmberget in the high north, which is being dismantled due to the impact of mining.

What next?

Meanwhile, earlier this year a poster campaign appeared on the walls of Stockholm’s subway terminals, saying: “You are more mine than you think.” The campaign was organised by the information platform The Swedish Mine (Svenska Gruvan), which is a joint initiative by mining and processing companies to inform the public about the importance of mining in people’s daily lives.

Emma Härdmark, director of communications of Svemin (the Swedish Association for Mines, Mineral and Metal Production), said in an interview with a Swedish newspaper, Resumé, that the idea is to “move the mine closer to people”, by drawing parallels between the minerals and metals that are present in the human body and those extracted in the Swedish mines.

For instance, the calcium in our bones that we need to “move, stand up or give someone a hug” can also be obtained from limestone, which is needed for the cement and concrete used to build homes, schools, bridges and hospitals.

One of the lines in the campaign is that “without iron, both the body and society come to a halt”. Iron helps transport oxygen through the human body to help us “breathe, move and live”, it says. In the same way, iron also helps keep society alive, observers are told.

Stockholm commuters see posters saying that: “You have a heart of stone.” Since the human body resembles the materials we find in nature, “having a heart of stone may not be so bad after all,” it suggests to people in Stockholm. It is thanks to this stone heart, the campaign insists, that “you are more alive than ever before”.

This campaign differs from other mining and industry narratives which commonly aim to convince viewers of the remoteness of mining relative to people and nature. Previous information videos produced by mining companies such as LKAB, or Svemin, an association representing about 70 mining and production companies, make use of imagery of unspoiled nature, the sky reflecting in tranquil lakes, and a fisherman strolling through a meadow, for instance.

In these information videos the camera often shifts between undisturbed nature and mining tunnels, suggesting harmonious coexistence of extraction, alongside but unnoticed by, nature and people.

Sami people are not often visible in mining literature. However, in Q&A sections of the Swedish Mine and Svemin homepages, it is stated that the mining industry works to reach solutions for coexistence with Sami communities and minimal impact on land use interests such as reindeer herding.

Sami people question this claim to coexistence. A Sami artist reflects in an interview with me on the threat to Indigenous livelihoods when faced with extractive industrial expansion: “It’s almost as if you have a reindeer in a paddock and then you put a wolf in the paddock and tell them, you are supposed to get along and coexist. In the end, the one will eat the other.”

While Swedish mining is commonly presented as environmentally and socially benign, harms from extraction are numerous. Information about where mining takes place and who is living close to its negative impacts are often left out of campaigns like these. Meanwhile, Stockholm, where the poster campaign is taking place, is unaffected by the negative impact of mining. Those who have to deal with the daily realities of mining are hundreds of miles away.

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This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Georgia de Leeuw, Lund University

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Georgia de Leeuw received funding from Forskraftstiftelsen Theodor Adelswärds Minne, the Lars Hierta Memorial Foundation, the Royal Swedish Agricultural Academy, and Letterstedtska föreningen for fieldwork during her PhD.