It all started in 1983 when the Swedish state had plans to dam the Kalix River (Gáláseatnu). At the same time, the Social Democrats had invited Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to Sweden.
The Sami youth organization saw its chance.
Terror-branded
Yasser Arafat and his organization PLO were far from uncontroversial. The PLO is the umbrella organization for several Palestinian organizations that during much of the 1960s and 1970s were linked to a long list of terrorist crimes. With the help of plane hijackings and several bloody deeds, they put the Palestinian issue on the world's agenda.
The Palestinians' struggle for their own nation had points of contact with the Sami struggle on the Swedish side, Sáminuorra noted. And invited the terrorist-branded leader Arafat to Jokkmokk.
"There are also de facto great similarities in principle between the Palestinian people's freedom struggle and the Sami legal struggle to ensure the fundamental rights of the Sami people," Sáminuorra's then chairman Aina Negga wrote in the invitation.
Sami organizations criticized
That invitation took a spin in the media right away. Both Sámeätnam and the Swedish Sami National Association went out and criticized Sáminuorra for their actions. Even the PLO themselves contacted Sáminuorra and asked the organization to be more discreet, says Lars Anders Baer.
But all this was exactly what the young people had hoped for, Lars Anders Baer reveals now, 40 years later.
"It was a hot potato when we got big headlines in the Swedish media, that was of course our goal," says Lars Anders Baer.
However, there was never a meeting. Yasser Arafat did not come to Jokkmokk.
Watch "15 minutes from Sápmi" on Saturday at 16:05 on SVT2 or on SVT Play.