Elsa Laula Renberg - the woman who gathered the Sami people

The woman who braved public disapproval to gather the Sami for the very first Sami national meeting was named Elsa Laula Renberg. This was the meeting in which the Sami political struggle was awakened and so she is considered an important advancer of Sami rights. Elsa Laula Renberg was born in 1877, and she grew up in the small village of Kanaaen in Västerbotten. Renberg founded the world's first Sami association in Sweden in 1904, and three years later she gathered the Sami for the historic first cross-border Sami meeting on 6 February 1917. The meeting was held in the Methodist church in Tråante, Trondheim, and the delegates discussed, among other things, organization, reindeer herding rights and schooling for Sami children. Renberg demanded equal rights for the Sami and an end to discrimination. These were, in fact, radical ideas at the time. In 2017, the Sami Council decided that Renberg's birthday of November 29th should be an official Sami flag day.