The first international Sámi Conference was officially opened in Jokkmokk

Jokkmokk

Jokkmokk is a locality and the seat of Jokkmokk Municipality in Norrbotten County, Sweden with 2,976 inhabitants in 2005. The Sámi name of the place means "River's Curve", due to the meandering river that runs through it...

, Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 on August 31, 1953 and closed four days later on September 3. Since then, the Sámi conferences have come to be important venues for the Sámi across Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

, Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

, Finland

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

 and Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

 to come together and discuss critical Sámi issues. Delegates have used the conferences as a forum to approve cultural symbols such as the Sami flag

Sami flag

The Sami flag is the flag of the Sámi people, the indigenous nation of the Nordic countries and the Kola Peninsula of the Russian Federation. The flag is also sometimes used to represent the territory of Sápmi, the traditional area of Sámi inhabitance....

, the Sámi anthem Sámi soga lávlla, Sami National Day

Sami National Day

The Sami National Day falls on February 6 as this date was when the first Sámi congress was held in 1917 in Trondheim, Norway. This congress was the first time that Norwegian and Swedish Sámi came together across their national borders to work together to find solutions for common problems.In 1992,...

, etc.

A list of the Sámi Conferences from 1953 to 2004

Conference	Location	Main theme
XVIII 2004	Norway	Sápmi for the Sámi SAMI SAMI is a Microsoft accessibility initiative released in 1998. The structured markup language is designed to simplify creating captions for media playback on a PC, i.e. not for broadcast purposes....
XVII 2000	Kiruna, Sweden	Self-governance
XVI 1996	Murmansk, Russia	Verddevuohta in the north — the Sámi model
XV 1992	Helsinki, Finland	The Sámi unite in Europe
XIV 1989	Lakselv, Norway	Self-governance
XIII 1986	Åre, Sweden	Tourism in Sápmi
XII 1983	Utsjoki, Finland
XI 1980	Tromsø, Norway	Sámi political program
X 1978	Arjeplog, Sweden
IX 1976	Inari, Finland	How do the Sámi live and why?
VIII 1974	Snåsa, Norway	Work and work methods at the (Nordic) Sámi Institute
VII 1971	Gällivare, Sweden	Sámi cultural policy
VI 1968	Hetta, Finland	Do the Sámi have a future in the Nordic Countries: Sámi, governmental and civil rights
V 1965	Tana, Norway	Sámi plans for the future
IV 1962	Kiruna, Sweden	Democracy and minorities
III 1959	Inari, Finland	Reindeer husbandry, language issues, etc.
II 1956	Karasjok, Norway	Scholastic and educational issues, natural resources and ways of making a living.
I 1953	Jokkmokk, Sweden