The Sámi Museum Siida is a national museum responsible for its special field, Sámi culture, and a regional museum responsible for tasks concerning cultural environments in the Sámi Area. We document both the spiritual and material culture of the Sámi in Finland in our collections and present it in exhibitions and publications. A central goal of ours is to support Sámi identity and cultural self-esteem. The Sámi Museum has sister museums in other Nordic countries and Russia that also preserve Sámi culture. We are also a member of the world’s indigenous people’s museum network.

Sámi Litto – the Association of the Sámi – founded the Sámi Museum in 1959. At the same time, work began to collect buildings and objects for the open-air museum. The first buildings of the open-air museum were moved to the current museum area in 1960. The Inari Sámi Museum opened to the public for the summer season in 1963 as the first independent Sámi museum in the Nordic countries.