Paper delivered at the Seventh Meeting of Nordic Ethnographers, held at Tromsø Museum in Tromsø, Norway, 29 August 1974, republished at the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the Sámi instituhtta and the Second International Circumpolar Workshop "Skábmadiggi", Guovdageaidnu/Kautokeino, 14 December 1994. The article was previously published in "Samfunnsforskning og minoritetsamfunn : foredrag på Nordisk etnografmøte Tromsø 1974" (Acta borealia. B, Humaniora ; 13).