February 6th commemorates the date in 1917 where the first joint Sami congress was held in Trondheim, Norway. This congress represented the first time that both Norwegian and Swedish Sami had come together across their borders to work together in finding solutions for common problems. The resolution for the 6th of February celebrations was officially passed in 1992 in Helsinki at the 15th Sami congress. Since 1993 Sweden, Norway and Finland have all recognized this date as Sami National Day with cross-border cooperation continuing to this day. The Sami are the only indigenous minority inside the European Union though many are now leaving their traditional homelands in the far north of the region. In Finland some 10 percent of the Sami population has moved to the urban Helsinki region in the past few years. YLE reports that in 1996 the Sami Parliament was established to coordinate cultural autonomy for its people, which is guaranteed under constitution by Finland and includes cooperation with the Swedish and Norwegian governments. Foremost among the tasks for the Sami Parliament is the preservation of the Sami, or Lappish, language which is spoken by just 0.03 percent of the population in Finland; where speakers have halved…