Sámi - the unacknowledged people of Finland
Anna Lundén
The University of Sussex
Knowledge, Power and Resistance (Global Studies)
Spring 2020
Introduction
Through many stereotypes, stories and movies, since I was a small child I had formed an image of native people who always seemed to me extremely exotic and fascinating, living in tropical or wild surroundings in harmony with nature and knowing a completely different form of life to my own. As an adult, after studying eight years of different branches of political science, I had luckily become more realistic but also more interested in indigenous people, their history, rights and current state in the modern day world. But truth be told, I had to come all the way to United Kingdom to study and understand that in my own country, in the country that has been stated many times one of “the most free and best governed country in the world” (Stats Finland, 2019), lives native people, indigenous people, the Sámi people.
I had a blurry image of the northern native people in back of my mind, but unfortunately most of the Finnish population, including me, has very little knowledge of Sámis, their culture or how strongly Finland has interfered with their history and more importantly, the current situation of nordic indigenous people. After briefly interviewing a couple of my Finnish friends, I came to realise that I had managed to graduate from Finnish elementary and high school without ever really studying anything related to the native people living in Finland. How is that possible? How could I have such a completely blank space in my common knowledge of my country?
Sámi people are the only known indigenous people in the region of European Union, spreaded across Lapland, in the northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Kola Peninsula in Russia. According to the official website Sámis of Finland, Sámediggi, people can be defined and identified as indigenous people if “they are the descended of those who inhabited a country or a geographical region at the time when people of different cultures or ethnic origins arrived and, if they identify themselves as indigenous people”. They have to maintain a historical continuity with pre-colonial societies and culture and have distinct social, economic or political system and maintain distinct language, culture and beliefs. The native people also have to form the non-dominant part of the society in the country they are living. The current total number of Sámi population is estimated to be over 75,000, with the majority living in Norway.
The complex history and treatment of Sámi people in Finland has led to the nation wide situation where there is very little actual knowledge of Sámi, and even more confusion and misunderstanding among the Finnish majority. For many Finns the Sámi still present a distant group of people living in the “periphery” Lapland among reindeers, wearing colorful, funny looking clothes. What is descriptive of the situation is that it wasn't many decades ago when Sámi people were still presented in advertisements for tourists as “Santa Claus´ little helpers”. (Ranta and Kanninen, 2019.)
In this essay I will explore the different reasons behind the general lack of awareness on Sámi people in Finland and look into the official Finnish education system. I will look into the reasons behind the fact that the official curriculum seems to be ignoring such a notable aspect of multiculturalism and history than native people. How does the Finnish education system continue to exclude and oppress the Sami people in Finnish society and how the situation could possibly be improved? I will try to answer these questions by examining the history of Sámi, their current situation in Finnish society and analyze the situation through various media resources, specialist´s statements and both Finnish and international scholars. I will reflect the relationship between Sámi and the Finnish education through Pierre Bourdieu´s theory of symbolic violence and Paulo Freire's educational theory Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which both I believe are helpful in describing the power dynamics and relations that are affecting Sámis´situation and rights in Finland.
The history of Sámi in Finland
Sámi people are the descendants of the people who first inhabited the Fennoscandia region around 10 000 years ago, shortly after the last Ice Age. Sámi people started to diverge from rest the of the population in Finland around 2000 BC, when their languages started to evolve towards different directions due to differences in culture and livelihoods. According to Sámi Parlament´s official website Sámediggi the biggest region ever inhabited by Sámi people covered “from Lake Ladoga to the Arctic Ocean and from Central Scandinavia to the White Sea”. Apart from the southern coast of Finland, Sámis had spread to the whole region of what is known as the state of Finland nowadays. Starting from the 16th century, it became important for the Nordic countries to start to take over more land under their ruling, which decreased Sámi people´s possibilities to continue their livelihood and traditions in such an extensive area and slowly Sámi people´s territory was forced to move and diminish to the northern parts of the countries. With religious converting, supporting settlements and by forcing the Nordic administrative system to take over Sámi people´s culture, the Sámi people lost most of their former reign over a large region of Northern Europe. With the rise of nationalism in many European countries in the 18th century, also Finland and other nordic countries started to practice piercing assimilation policy which made it even harder for Sámis to maintain their own culture, language and human rights. (Sámediggi, 2020.)
Also the Christian church played an important role in the change or course of Sámi´s history. Starting from the 17th century the church started systematically spreading the Christian religion through ambulatory schools. Although the goal of spreading the Christian religion and Finnish education has been seen more as acculturation than oppressing completely the rights of Sámi people, most of the teaching happened in Finnish and the system emphasized Finnish culture, which led to fennizising Sámi
people and their culture. After the influence of nationalism in the 19th century following the decades after the Second World War, it became mandatory for every Finnish citizen to study in primary school, during which time many different dialects of Sámi vanished, leaving only three remaining (Nordic, Koltta and Inari Sámi). Most of the Sámi still lived in rural north Finland after World War Two, which obligated many Sámi parents to send their children to boarding houses far away from their house and familiar surroundings. In these boarding houses it was often completely forbidden to talk or practice any Sámi language. This made many Sámi children at that time thoroughly detached from their native culture, family and language, and caused traumatic childhood experiences, which affected many Sámi people´s lives for decades afterwards and made some even permanently deny any relation to Sámi culture. Starting from the 1970´s and 80´s, the educational policy changed and Sámi children started to receive education both in Finnish and in their own native language. Nevertheless, the aggressive assimilation policies throughout the 20th century caused a lot of distress, shame, political and economic impacts in Sámi culture for decades. (Keskitalo, Linkola, Nyyssönen, Mcintosh, Paksuniemi and Turunen, 2016.)
Finland has signed the international ILO 169 agreement in 1989 (International Labour Organisation, 2020) but unlike for example Norway and Denmark have, Finland has not yet ratified the agreement. This means Sámi people are not allowed fully take part in the Finnish parliamentary nor are they allowed to make independent decisions on Sámi homeland or culture. However, Sámi people were declared legally as Finland´s native people in 1995 and their status was written to the constitution. Sámi people have constitutional self-government in the Sámi Homeland (in Finland municipalities of Enontekiö, Inari and Utsjoki as well as the Lappi reindeer-herding district in the municipality of Sodankylä.) and the Sámi Parliament, Saamelaiskäräjät, was founded in 1996, which in theory allows them to decide on spheres such as culture and language in Sámi region. (Sámediggi, 2020.)
Sámi today
According to the official Sámi Parliament website Sámediggi, there are today approximately 10 000 Sámi living in Finland. More than 60 percent live outside of Sámi homeland, the majority in the capital of Finland, Helsinki, being “the biggest Sámi village of the country”. But how are Sámi people defined in modern day Finland? Like in many indigenous cultures, the native people have also been intermarrying for centuries with the majority of the country, and therefore genetics is not the determinative factor in defining Sámi. In 1996 it was written to the constitution that anyone who´s parents or grandparents are stated as Sámi or anyone who talks as native language one of the official Sámi languages, can be identified as Sámi. Sámi people also believe the identity of Sámi is shaped through socialization to the norms and values of their culture, than necessarily their bloodline or language. (Ranta and Kanninen, 2019.)
According to a Finnish scholar Sanna Valkonen (2013) being part of the Sámi culture and identity is about belonging; belonging to a certain symbolic structure and physical community and having a “living contact” to the culture. Even though many generations lost their ability to talk their native language due to the fennizising policies, language is still seen as one of the most defining element of belonging to Sámi culture. Also the respect and relation with nature is important for many Sámi, since there are still a lot of Sámi whose main income consists of reindeer herding, fishing or traditional handcraft, especially in Sámi regions. It goes without saying that traditional music, food, and the national suite, Gákti, are important symbols and elements of the Sámi culture, and the elements are treated with a lot of respect in modern Sámi culture as well. What also characterizes the contradictory history of Sámi people, is the fact that due to the regional changes, assimilation and fennizising policies, many branches of Sámi culture have unfortunately died out officially, although there are still people who identify themselves as Sámis of these particular branches. These unfortunate events have created confusion and quarrel among Sámi people and created disagreement between the Sámi parliament and Finnish state - who can be identified as Sámi and most of all, who have the power and right to define cultural identity policies. (Ranta and Kanninen, 2019.)
Who are Sámi, (should) the Finns ask
In the beginning of the 21st century the rights, possibilities and recognition of Sámi people and their culture have changed to a better direction together with the new Sámi generation´s political activism. A lot of young Sámis are not afraid to speak out in the media and social media has created new opportunities for Sámi people to be heard. Starting from 2018, Sámi children have also been able to receive teaching in their own language outside the Sámi region, in Helsinki.
“As a child, I always thought that once I became an adult, I wouldn’t have to explain myself anymore. I lived in an illusion, that at least adults would know about us Sámi people”
Petra Laiti, magazine “Maailman kuvalehti” 17th of December, 2019
(Author´s translation)
Still, as the chairperson of Sámi Parliament´s Youth Organisation Petra Laiti states, the average level of awareness about Sámi people and their culture among the majority of Finns is very low. According to Laiti, regardless of whether she is lecturing children in primary schools or students in universities, it is often unclear to most Finns that Sámi people are officially defined as indigenous people and that they are completely independent culture in contrast to the Finnish culture. Due to the assimilation and fennizising policies that took place in Finland through past centuries, the awareness and acknowledgement of Sámi people and their culture is almost trivial in Finland. (Ranta and Kanninen, 2019.)
The level of awareness in the past might be somewhat understandable, but how can it be that in a country that is claimed to have one of world´s best educational systems (for example in World bank blog 2017, ”Finland: A Miracle of Eduaction?”), an average Finnish citizen is probably not taught or generally aware of the indigenous people´s rights and culture living in the same country as they are? In 2019 Finland received once again comments and recommendations from ECRI (European Commission against Racism) on how to decrease racism and increase acknowledgement of minorities in Finland. One of the main concerns was the level of awareness among Finnish citizens about Sámi and and their culture. (ECRI Report on Finland 2019.) In its report, ECRI recommended that Finland increases the awareness on Sámi people through education and through different campaigns.
Lack of education, lack of awareness
How does the Finnish education system address the role of Sámi people in Finnish society then? What is taught in schools about the history and rights of the only indigenous people living in Europe? According to the head of National board of Education in Finland, Olli-Pekka Heinonen, the official curriculum does acknowledge Sámi culture and this way developes students´ understanding of minorities in Finland. Heinonen also comments that it has been noticed in many different occasions that the majority of Finnish population awareness on Sámi varies a lot, and therefore The Youth Academia organisation (Nuorten Akatemia) together with the Sámi Parliament´s Youth Organisation have created different kinds of participatory games for students to use in school and this way learn through discussion. (The official site of National Board of Education in Finland.) One of the designers of these “participatory Sámi games”, a member of Sámi Parliament´s Youth Organisation, Minna Lehtola, mentioned in a interview (YLE Areena, 2019.) that she believes Sámi people are often misunderstood and treated through old stereotypes, exactly because of the lack of education; how could the majority of the population know about Sámi, if the educational system does not acknowledge the minorites in the curriculum?
The Finnish National Curriculum (OPS) was renewed in the year 2014. As for the Sámi people, their right to receive teaching in their own language in Sámi homeland was strengthened. According to the curriculum, it is important to encourage Sámi students to learn how to participate in society and culture in their own native language, and also to realise the importance of their own language and learn about the Sámi culture. (OPS 2014, p. 86.) Starting from the year 2018, Sámi students who speak Sámi at home or as their second language, have also had the right to study the language of Sámi outside the official Sámi region. For example in Helsinki, the students have the possibility to study Sámi starting from kindergarten (Sámediggi.)
However, what is not mentioned in the official curriculum, is what the rest of the students, “the non-Sámi” students should know about the native people of their country. It is stated that “students should be educated to acknowledge how to live in culturally sustainable way: acknowledging diversity and human rights, learn how to interact and express themselves and their views respectfully in the society” (OPS 2014, p. 21). Throughout the elementary school students are instructed to value cultural differences and see it as a positive value. The school environment should encourage students to pay attention to different aspects and ways of thinking in their society. In secondary school, in subjects such as literature and social studies, students should study the multicultural aspects of their country and acknowledge the minorities and cultural diversity in Finland.
To summarize, Sámi students´ rights to study and learn in their own native language is relatively well secured, and what comes to the relation among the rest of the students and their relationship with minorities, according to the national curriculum all students in Finland should be taught to become sensitive to the cultural diversity. To find out how well these principles and guidelines are fulfilled in reality, I interviewed a Finnish deputy headmaster, Márton Hirvonen, from the Nummenlanharju Elementary School, in southern Finland. According to Hirvonen, the possibilities to study in Sámi are constantly getting better and he believes strengthening the Sámi culture through education is promising. Nevertheless, Hirvonen thinks to educate the students on Sámi culture and their rights, is very ambivalent and often does not meet the demand to meet the lack of general awareness. The main problem seems to be that the guidelines of the curriculum are extremely vague, and therefore it completely depends on teachers, whether they see it necessary to teach students about the native people of Finland or not. Since Finnish minorities have not been part of the official curriculum for long and it is not mandatory, the minorities get easily forgotten in the already full teaching schedule. According to Hirvonen, Finnish teachers have always had relatively independent and autonomous position in designing the content of their subjects. Hence, the curriculum encourages teachers to teach about the cultural diversity in Finland, but it is not mandatory. In other words, a Finnish student could easily graduate from elementary school, even from high school, and never heard a word from the native people of Finland.
Márton Hirvonen thinks that many teachers have come to realise the lack of students´ awareness on Sámi culture, but there is also a lot of confusion about whose responsibility or which subject should cover this topic. One option would design the curriculum to be more multidisciplinary, but Hirvonen supports the idea of Sámi culture becoming clearly mentioned in the curriculum, in order to change the current confusion.
“I believe we need generally more intercultural dialogue between the majority and minorities in Finland. We need to form the education towards more inclusive and equal approach. Unrealistic stereotypes of Sámi people play still surprisingly strong part in majority´s awareness. On the other hand, even deeper problem in society is the fact that young people are not even aware of Sámi people´s existence nor do they know about the hostile, racist treatment they are experiencing.”
Márton Hirvonen, Deputy headmaster of Nummenlanharju Elementary School
Symbolic violence
The questions of Sámi people and their rights get often forgotten just because they´re so marginalised and compared to the Finnish mainstream culture, the topic is considered rather small, argues the former president of the Sámi Parliament Tiina Sanila-Aikio (YLE Areena Podcast: Saamen tyttäret / The Daughters of Sámi). The lack of knowledge and the low level of Sámi awareness seems to indicate the problem is based on societal structural level.
According to Pierre Bourdieu power is constituted through agency and practice, in other words power is embodied in habitus. Habitus means a certain, legitimate, socially accepted way of being in certain concepts. Big and powerful institutions which have a lot of legitimate power - such as a national education system - possess symbolic power in their habitus, which grant them the power to determine social structures and shape the way individuals perceive the world around them. (Bourdieu, 1994.) The Finnish national education system is considered as one of the best educational systems in the world, hence its habitus is not easily criticised. What makes it even more difficult to acknowledge the injustices and practiced ignorance, is the fact that only in the past couple of decades there have emerged some public discussion on Sámi peoples´ history and unconventional treatment. According to the scholar Veli-Pekka Lehtola (2015), the usage of the term “colonialism” has been very complicated in Finland, since the country has never had any colonies outside of its borders or overseas. According to Lehtola “The fact that Finns have usually been subject to superpowers, as have been the Sámi, has strengthened the notion of Finns about themselves as representatives of democracy and tolerance, who also treated the Sámi on an equal basis already in history” (Lehtola 2015, p. 23). The denial of colonialism or any form of oppression has grown into the Finns´ habitus so effectively, that when the neighbour nordic countries have previously apologised for their native peoples´ mistreatment, for example in the year 1998 Finland´s Minister of Justice Jussi Järvenpää stated: “There are currently no issues that would require an apology.” (Lehtola, 2015.) Intentionally or not, the Finnish state practices its symbolic violence towards Sámi people through the official educational system, with completely dismissing the history and rights of the country´s native people. There is no room for discussion, if there is no awareness of the problem in the first place. Pierre Bourdieu uses the term phenomenological knowledge (Bourdieu, 1977) to describe a certain way of thinking that is unquestioned, taking for granted. Another way of describing the unquestioned situation is doxa: a way of being and thinking that is unquestioned and creates social limitations and regulations. By using its symbolic power, the educational system is creating a doxa, where the lack of rights or acknowledgement of Sámi people in Finnish society is not questioned. The usage of symbolic power creates symbolic violence towards the Sámi people.
One example of the oppressing educational structure is the way the school books are written and produced. In her MSc Dissertation (submitted for the Department of Pedagogy in the University of Lapland, 2012) Minna-Maarit Korva studied the presentation of minorities in Finnish school books. Korva used as research material the school books of geography, political science and history used in Finnish secondary school. What comes to Sámi people´s presentation, Korva found the information referred to Sámi very slim and often vague. Sámi people were told to be living in north, living mainly from traditional incomes such as reindeer herding, and it was often mentioned as sidenote that they have come to loose their territories over time to Finnish majority. All in all the relationship between Sámi and Finnish majority was presented neutral and problem-free. Sámi people where presented as marginalised part of the society and based on the short observations on these books´ content, Sámis´ rights were secured. Korva argues that the false generalisation and information based on stereotypes is in fact strengthening the “otherness” of the minorities, not expanding the awareness on multicultural note.
From margins to equality
Intentionally or not, unfortunately the educational system seems to ignore the native people living in Finland. By using its symbolic power - or symbolic violence - the system enforces the Sámi people to become the “other”, even in the 21th century. The current state of Finnish society alienates Sámi from the rest of the society by perceiving them as “others”. According to a scholar Sara Ahmed (2000), in order to recognise yourself, you have to distinguish yourself from others. To know what is familiar, you have to know how to point out the strange, the other. Ahmed argues that in multicultural and globalizing world, where one's identity is ever changing and fluid due to the changing circumstances, it becomes even more important to assort “us” and “them”. Ahmed emphasizes that “the other” doesn´t have to be anything or anyone specifically defined and the idea of other can be formed through news, information or the exact opposite - the complete lack of information about people who do not take part in our everyday lives.
Due to the fact that Sámi people are often treated as the “others” of Finnish society, Pirita Näkkäläjärvi states in her MSc Dissertation (submitted to the Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics, 2017), that Sámis
experience lot of hate speech and silencing, specially in social media, but also in some occasion in mainstream media channels, like newspapers. Either old stereotypes - Sámi being dirty, primitive even alcoholic group of Finnish people living in North with reindeers - or the new stereotypes - presenting Sámi as angry, undemocratic type of people who always demand special treatment - create an unnecessary gap between the majority of Finns and Sámi, making the majority´s voice stronger and more relevant than the minority´s. For example the Sámi parliament is not taken as serious institution as the Finnish political entities, according to Näkkäläjärvi. In the light of stereotypes and lack of knowledge, Sámi people are often treated less than equal participants in public life, which creates subordination, disinformation and delegitimization. According to Näkkäläjärvi, all these attributes create the lack of freedom of speech of Sámi people and the majority of Finns don´t understand how these kind of forms of oppression create lot of anxiety and stress among Sámi and their concerns of the future of their culture and people. The former president of the Sámi Parliament Tiina Sanila-Aikio has stated that the majority of Finnish population have know idea what it means to live according to the traditional Sámi life and culture, and therefore it is very complicated for the majority of Finns to understand the struggles and and importance of nature that Sámi people experience. (YLE Areena Podcast: Saamen tyttäret / The Daughters of Sámi): “An average Finn never has to worry about whether their culture or language still exists after 20 years or is it even possible to transmit the culture for the future generations”.
How do we transform the society to become more open to its diverse population and reassure the freedom of speech and right to maintain their own culture in modern day Finland? As discussed earlier in this essay, the lack of knowledge and awareness is causing a lot of misunderstanding and confusion between Finnish majority and Sámi people, so the first place to start the reform could be the educational system, where people come aware starting from young age of the minorities and native people living in Finland. Albeit the Sámi people´s culture and existence should be articulated better in the Finnish curriculum, it is also a question of how it is actualised. When Sámis are acknowledged more as “others” than equals in the society, there can be no real conversation between the majority and minority. Paulo Freire argues in his famous educational theory “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” that for one to truly better their situation, the oppressed must first be humanised, in another words, considered as equals to the rest of the society. Only that way they can truly break the structure of subjugation. “The oppressed must unveil the world of oppression and through the praxis commit themselves to the transformation” (Freire 1970, p. 28). According to Freire, any kind of education that is executed for the oppressed, not with them, will never truly change the power dynamics; the change must always be created through reflection and discussion performed by all the parties. (Freire, 1970.) When considering Sámi people's rights and acknowledgement in the Finnish society, it is not enough that they are “allowed” to study and practice their own culture in the limits instructed by the Finnish society and maintain their culture only through their own Sámi parliament, which power is very limited and subordinate to the Finnish parliament and other political entities. Sámis must be acknowledged through education and this way be included into the public discussion and take part in the decision-making considering their rights and livelihood. The change must be realised through increasing awareness and this way Sámis together with the majority of Finnish society can change a multicultural society towards more inclusive and permissive direction.
“The truth is, however, that the oppressed are not “marginals”, are not people living “outside” the society. They have always been “inside” - inside the structure which made them “beings for others”. The solution is not to “integrate” them into the structure of oppression, but to transform that structure so that they can become “beings” for themselves."
(Freire 1970, p. 47)
Conclusion
The controversial history of Sámi people and their forced adjustment to constantly changing circumstances has shaped both the way Finnish majority is aware of the native people they are living with in the same country, and on the other hand shaped the way how Sámis have been able to maintain their culture, rights and even identity while perceived as the “others” in their former homeland.
Due to the history and the complicated political debates among Finnish and Sámi, it seems there is still a huge lack of awareness of Sámi and their culture, which again manifestes the symbolic power the Finnish culture, state, educational system has over the minorities. The most essential decision making considering Sámis is still made by Finnish government, the final definition of who can be defined as Sámi is conducted by the Finnish Supreme administrative court and the level of knowledge about Sámi is determined by the Finnish educational system. Very few people Finnish people know how to define a native people or what the rights are, how many different languages Sámi speak or what areas in Finland belong to Sámi nowadays. (Ranta and Kukka, 2019.)
As it was mentioned in the ECRI 2019 report, Finland should increase teaching and acknowledgement to its curriculum, which would raise awareness and this way also reduce hate speech and stereotyping. In this essay I have tried to present the different aspects and reasons behind the lack of knowledge and also think about both practical and theoretical means of how to improve the current situation of Sámi people´s rights. I strongly believe, Finland, as many other nations struggling with similar problems, should first acknowledge the existence of their native people and the way history has shaped their current reality. Second, start to educate people starting from the school and this way reduce the concept of “other”. Third, include Sámi people to the public discussion and give them the right to determine and effect the place and course in Finnish society.
“A real humanist can be identified more by his trust in the people, which engages him in their struggle, than by thousand actions in their favor without that trust.”
(Paulo Freire 1970, p. 34)
At present, it is hard both for Sámi people and for the rest of the nation to have a dialogue of Sámis´ rights and existing, while they do not even exist on the papers of school books or in the awareness of Finnish people. If Finnish people would be more aware about Sami and their culture, it would be easier to create a platform where
both Finns, Sámi and other minorities are able to talk together about the society and the use of the country they are sharing. But in order for this to happen, it is necessary to trust the oppressed, trust their ability to reason and treat them as equals, not as the others, as Paulo Freire argues.
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