The Sámi Museum Siida is the national museum of the Sámi people of Finland, the only recognized indigenous culture in Europe. It is the only museum in Finland to actively collect Sámi cultural heritage by preserving, safeguarding, and presenting Sámi tangible and intangible cultural heritage and conducting collections-based research. The museum, founded in 1959 and housed in its own building since 1998, was fully refurbished and reopened in 2022 to include renovated public spaces and a nature centre. The new museum has been created for, by, and with the Sami communities as a safe place to collect Sámi heritage and to bring it front and centre in a contemporary cultural dialogue. The museum is also the result of repatriation, or rematriation, of Sámi material culture from the Finnish National Museum to Siida after years of negotiations and debates. Around 2,200 items were repatriated in the early 2020s, and the new building was designed to preserve the collection and make it accessible to locals and international visitors. Nearly 300 Sámi participated in the repatriation process.
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