Truth, Reconciliation, and Sámi Education in the Nordic North: Otso Kortekangas Guest Blog

“Both the educational system and the language have contributed to an awakening nationalism and a movement for Sámi Indigenous rights that pose a strong rebuttal to the assimilation, which was attempted at various times.” Marianne Stenbaek, Foreword to Language, Citizenship, and Sámi Education in the Nordic North, 1900-1940.

In 2019, the Finnish government announced the approval of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) which hopes to address the historical injustices and oppression experienced by the Sámi people of Finland, a project inspired in part by Canada’s own TRC founded in 2008. As work on the Sámi Truth and Reconciliation Commission is set to begin, MQUP author Otso Kortekangas looks back to the history of the indigenous Sámi population in Northern Europe, recalling the consequences of past educational reforms and their impact on Sámi culture and language.

Presenting the Sámi as an active, transnational population in early twentieth-century northern Europe, Otso Kortekangas’ new book Language, Citizenship, and Sámi Education in the Nordic North, 1900-1940 examines how educational policies affected the Sámi people residing in the northern parts of Norway, Sweden, and Finland. In this detailed study, Kortekangas explores what the arguments were for the lack of Sámi language in schools, how Sámi teachers have promoted the use of their mother tongue within the school systems, and how the history of the Sámi compares to other indigenous and minority populations globally.

The year 2021 will witness the start of the work of a Sámi Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in Finland. A TRC is already working in Norway, and in Sweden, the planning for a Sámi TRC is under way. The main aim of the TRCs in each country is to review and assess earlier governmental policies targeting the indigenous Sámi population in Norway, Finland and Sweden, make Sámi voices and experiences visible, and to point toward ways forward.

Differently from the Canadian TRC (2008–2015) that focused on indigenous education and residential schools, the Nordic Sámi TRCs will take a comprehensive approach to historical policies targeting the Sámi and, in the case of Norway, the Finnish-speaking Kven minority. However, governmental educational policies will be a very important theme for the commissions to investigate, as assimilation and segregation applied in education is one of the external forces that have molded Sámi culture the most during the 20th century.

As elucidated in my book Language, Citizenship, and Sámi Education in the Nordic North, 1900-1940 (MQUP 2021), different educational actors had different approaches. Sámi education was traditionally organized by the Lutheran churches in each country. The high priority the Lutheran dogma ascribes to the intelligibility of the gospel and Christianity education by large entailed that Sámi language varieties were in use as languages of instruction in many schools with Sámi pupils in the Nordic north. Gradually, the governments of Norway, Sweden, and Finland took over the responsibility for elementary education from the church around the turn of the century 1900. The governmental educational authorities and politicians downgraded the importance of Sámi language in education, as quality of education and the mastering of each country’s majority language became paramount educational aims. In Norway and Finland, assimilation to the majority population was the norm in the governmental elementary schools, with certain exceptions. The nomadic reindeer herding Sámi in Sweden’s mountain regions were de jure separated to their own group, with the obligation to place their children in specific schools. These so called nomad schools were designed after the idealized notion Swedish elementary authorities had on the “true” Sámi way of life and efficient reindeer herding.

Sámi poet and teacher Pedar Jalvi in 1905. Credit: Armas Launis. Copyright: CC BY SA 4.0.

The educational reforms of the early twentieth century that led, in many individual cases, to the tragic loss of Sámi language, had a brighter side, as well. As in many other instances of minority education, the skills and knowledge Sámi pupils gained in the schools had, at least in some cases, an empowering function. Most of the powerhouses spearheading the early and mid-twentieth century Sámi cultural movements and the Sámi opposition to government policies were teachers, educated at schools and on teachers’ training courses to navigate both the Sámi and the majority culture contexts. These teachers were pioneers of promoting Sámi culture as an active, independent culture that existed alongside and independent of other Nordic cultures and states.

While the TRCs in each country are paramount for the future relations of the Sámi and the majority populations, it is important to keep in mind that the Sámi existed and exist also outside of the frame and borders of each of the three nation states. There is a certain risk of nationalization and further minoritization of the Sámi in Norway, Sweden and Finland if the various Sámi groups are always first and foremost treated as a national minority rather than a transnational population. It is critical that this historical transnational fact, together with the diversity of voices and perspectives within Sámi education, are included in the work of the TRCs in each country. Only by so doing will it be possible to reproduce a rightful picture of historical events as a base for future reconciliation processes.

Otso Kortekangas is a researcher at the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and the author of numerous publications on Sámi history and education. He is the author of Language, Citizenship, and Sámi Education in the Nordic North, 1900-1940.