A significant catalyst was the right of return, based on President Koivisto's initiative that people of Ingrian ancestry would be allowed to immigrate to Finland.
As they were a nomadic people in a sparsely settled land, the Sámi were always able to find new and open territory in which to follow their traditional activities of hunting, fishing, and slash-and-burn agriculture.
[2] In 1988, about 90 percent of Finland's 4,400 Sámi-speaking citizens lived in the municipalities of Enontekiö, Inari, and Utsjoki, and in the reindeer-herding area of Sodankylä.
[2] Few Finnish Sámi actually led the traditional nomadic life pictured in school geography texts and in travel brochures.
[2] There have been many efforts over the years by Finnish authorities to safeguard the Sámi' culture and way of life and to ease their entry into modern society.
[2] Sámi languages have an official status in the municipalities of Enontekiö, Inari, and Utsjoki, and in the northern part of Sodankylä since 1992.
With their unusual dress, unique customs, and specialized trades for earning their livelihood, Roma have stood out, and their stay in the country has not been an easy one.
They have suffered periodic harassment from the hands of both private citizens and public officials, and the last of the special laws directed against them was repealed only in 1883.
Even in the second half of the 1980s, Finland's 5,000 to 6,000 Romani remained a distinct group, separated from the general population both by their own choice and by the fears and the prejudices many Finns felt toward them.
Their low educational level (an estimated 20 percent of adult Romani could not read) was raised, in part, through more vocational training.
A permanent Advisory Commission on Gypsy Affairs was set up in 1968, and in 1970 racial discrimination was outlawed through an addition to the penal code.
The law punished blatant acts such as barring Romani from restaurants or shops or subjecting them to unusual surveillance by shopkeepers or the police.
Although constrained by law to follow certain occupations, mainly those connected with the sale of clothes, the Jewish community in Finland was able to prosper, and by 1890 it numbered around 1,000.
Finnish independence brought complete civil rights, and during the interwar period there were some 2,000 Jews in Finland, most of them living in urban areas in the south.
By the 1980s, assimilation and emigration had significantly reduced the size of the community, and it was only with some difficulty that it maintained synagogues, schools, libraries, and other pertinent institutions.
The Tatars in Finland have significantly integrated into the Finnish society but continue to maintain their different religion, mother tongue, and ethnic culture.