Thinking Through Sámi Childhoods

• Main Author: Anderson, Sally Dean
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: children; indigenous; environmental transformation; Sámi; Arctic; Cadena
• Online Access: https://pure.au.dk/portal/en/publications/007d2f9b-b2f8-4e2e-9e69-3e99f7c5e7cf

Indigenous children are often portrayed as living in 'two different worlds' - as navigating between native communities and Whiteman schools, between traditional forest dwelling and modern village life (cf. Peshkin 1997, Rival 2000). Following the transformation of Sámi childhoods over the past 40 years, I argue that the ‘world’ Sámi children presently navigate is not well served by this binary trope. Drawing on Cadena & Blaser’s (2018) notion of ‘a world of many worlds’, I explore the spatial and temporal experiential trajectories of Sámi children's lives (age 2- 17) and the ongoing political struggles, global markets and broadening educational opportunities presently impacting them. I focus on children’s involvement in environments open to them through reindeer ownership, seasonal reindeer migration and kin obligation, and their engagement in the burgeoning Arctic tourist trade, in social and cultural media, educational exchange and international travel. The paper addresses underlying questions of self-determination - inherent both in Sámi upbringing and in the ever-present struggle for self-determination as an indigenous minority in a Scandinavian welfare state. My aim, as an educational anthropologist, is to learn from these ongoing struggles as they unfold in mobile childhoods, grounded in the migratory cycles of reindeer herds and stretched by opportunities to experience and position themselves in environments further abroad. My question is how we might better educate all children in less universalized and standardized ways that negate, reduce and ignore the environments – the many worlds - in which their lives unfold.