‘A lot of collective trauma’: Sweden’s Indigenous Sami people speak to truth commission

Láilá Susanne Vars, a member of the truth commission, says there have been ‘really traumatic and dramatic stories’. Photograph: Pål Norvoll

Before starting “nomad school” – a segregated church-run school system for Indigenous children that existed in Sweden until the 1960s – aged seven, Lars Stenberg had only ever known the safe environment of his family.

But after three years of bullying at the institution – which the Swedish church has since admitted to being racist – he was left with emotional scars so deep they still haunt him today.