Brage Nord Open Research Archive

Jannok Nutti, Ylva

Johansson, Viktor Magne

Schaffar, Birgit

Speki. Nordic Philosophy and Education Review 
/Speki. Nordisk pedagogisk-filosofisk tidsskrift 
Vol. 1, No. 2 (2024)  
Article received 20 Dec 2024 / published 21 Dec 2024 
https://doi.org/10.5617/speki.12067 
 
 
CONTACT Ylva Jannok Nutti, ylvajn@samas.no Department of Sámi Teacher Education, Sámi allaskuvla/ Sámi 
University of Applied Sciences, Hánnoluohkká 45, NO-9520 Guovdageaidnu/Kautokeino, Norway 
© 2024 The Author(s). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, 
which allows sharing the article for non-commercial purposes, as long as the author and Speki. Nordic Philosophy and Education Review 
are credited. The original works should be properly cited and not altered, transformed or built upon in any way. 
SPECIAL ISSUE INTRODUCTION 
Philosophies of Sámi Education: Indigeneity, 
Place and Learning 
 
Ylva Jannok Nutti, ORCID: 0000-0003-1023-8269, Viktor Magne Johansson, ORCID: 
0000-0003-0298-3832, Birgit Schaffar, ORCID: 0000-0001-9504-6519 
1. Department of Sámi Teacher Education, Sámi allaskuvla/Sámi University of 
Applied Sciences, Norway 
2. Teacher Education, Södertörn University, Sweden and Faculty of Education and 
the Arts, Nord University, Norway. 
3. Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki, Finland 
Background  
Ahead of the annual conference of the Nordic Educational Research Association (NERA) in 
Oslo, 2023, the Nordic Society for Philosophy of Education (NSPE) organized their annual 
pre-conference and chose to discuss the concepts of rootedness and flexibility. Prof. Pigga 
Keskitalo from the University of Lapland was invited and talked about The importance of 
place and attachment in Sámi Education. Keskitalo gave an illuminating insight in the history 
of Sámi education and connected educational ideas and concepts both to their devastating, 
but also their liberating potential (Keskitalo 2023, Keskitalo et al 2024). Keskitalo’s talk was 
followed by associate professor Ole Andreas Kvamme from the University of Oslo. Kvamme 
linked his talk Sustainability in education: What knowledge is of most worth? Ethical and 
political considerations to both the movie Ellos eatnu—La elva leve (Let the River Flow), 
about the Atla-conflict in the 1970’s and early 1980’s, directed by Ole Giæver. The film takes 
up the struggle of acknowledging one’s own Sámi identity, while the Atla-conflict 
exemplifies the strength in political collective action and awakening. Kvammes has 
published his thoughts afterwards (Kvamme 2024). 
At the same conference, the Nordic Society for Philosophy of Education decided to 
move the journal Studier i Pædagogisk Filosofi closer to NSPE and rename it Speki. Nordic 
Philosophy and Education Review. Speki aims to be a platform for “the philosophical, 
theoretical, normative and conceptual problems and issues in educational research, policy 
and practice” (Speki webpage) in the Nordic countries. The new editor in chief, Prof. Torill 
Strand, and the editorial board agreed in their constitutional meeting to dedicate the journal’s 
first effort into a call for papers for a Special Issue about Philosophies of Sámi Education: 
Indigeneity, place and learning. From the editorial board’s perspective, representing scholars 
from the Nordic majority’s educational and philosophical schools of thought, our aim has 
Jannok Nutti et al., Introduction, SPEKI, Vol. 1, No. 2 (2024) pp. 116-121 117 
been to start the new journal by learning more about Sámi perspectives on former and current 
educational questions. 
For this Special Issue, we, the editors Ylva Jannok Nutti, Viktor Magne Johansson, 
Birgit Schaffar, invited contributions in which education is understood broadly, involving 
formal and informal educational settings, kindergartens, schools and universities. Likewise, 
philosophy was understood widely as involving ethics, ontologies, epistemologies, and 
existential questions in theoretical investigations. This involves taking back education and 
philosophy that emerges from local indigenous practices, and various relations to land. 
Contributions were invited to explore various Sámi educational concepts and 
practices, but also how concepts within the global scholarship of indigenous philosophies of 
education relate to the Sámi context, including educational work that challenges colonial 
structures. We were trying to be aware of the possible contradiction between educational and 
philosophical wisdom and established academic forms of writing. Therefore, we encouraged 
both contributions in form of traditional journal articles as well as other forms of writing like 
interviews with scholars, authors, or tradition bearers, or poetical or narrative forms of 
writing that explores relevant topics. Our call went out to scholars in education, philosophy, 
literature, anthropology, and indigenous studies, as well as to scholars in related disciplines. 
Situating the special issue in a Sámi academic landscape 
The varied landscape of Sápmi – ranging from forests, coasts, mountains, tundra, and mires 
– and the livelihoods of those who live there have developed Sámi forms of pedagogy and 
education. The Sámi people have over time relied on nature for their livelihood, and 
connection to land is embedded in livelihood practices. This connection is stressed in Jok’s 
et. al. (2020) discussion about mistranslations of the Sámi landscape word, meahcci. Meahcci 
can in English be described as wilderness. However, they argue that meahcit (in the plural) 
are practical settings, shaped by ambiguous yet meaningful social connections with both 
human and non-human beings, where the distinction between nature and culture does not 
exist. The Sámi people have shared the land collectively, guided by mutual understandings 
and agreements on its use, a use without leaving lasting traces (e.g. Kuokkanen, 2007; 
Nergård, 2006; Oskal, 2000; Porsanger & Guttorm, 2011; Sara, 2004). Rauna Kuokkanen 
and Asta M. Balto (2024) connect the Sámi concept of ovttastallan1 and its practices, to the 
principle of Indigenous relationality. In Sámi relationships to the land, land is a physical and 
spiritual whole wherein humans are a part. Because of the close relationship to the land, one 
of the suggested topics was “Place, land-based and sustainable education”.  
Other examples of themes were “Learning with elders and tradition bearers” and 
“Sámi literature and narrative traditions”. Through involvement in livelihood activities, and 
the participation of children and youth alongside family members and other community 
members, knowledge is passed down from one generation to another (e.g. Balto, 2023; 
Jannok Nutti, 2018; Hoëm, Sara, 2004). Livelihood work serves as a key space for the 
transmission of knowledge, with work communities being essential settings where skills, 
values, and norms are passed on to younger generations (Joks, 2007). Storytelling can in that 
way serve as a link between generations (Balto, 2023). A child or youth can join an Elder in 
 
1
 North Sámi for being together. 
118 Speki. Nordic Philosophy and Education Review / Speki. Nordisk pedagogisk-filosofisk tidsskrift, Vol. 1, No. 
2 (2024) pp. 116-121 
a practical activity, and in this context, teaching can occur more unnoticed, while listening to 
a story (Gaski, 2019; Nergård, 2006). Asta M. Balto’s book is a study of Sámi traditional and 
contemporary childrearing, and Sámi and Indigenous childhood and adolescence was also 
named as possible topic for articles to the special issue. 
In 1910, the first Sámi writer Johan Turi published the book Muitalus sámiid birra 
[An Account of the Sámi] (Turi, 2012). In the book, Turi provided detailed accounts of Sámi 
reindeer herding life, with the intention of increasing awareness and understanding of this 
way of living. Sámi women literature was examined by Vuokko Hirvonen. In her book Voices 
from Sápmi (Hirvonen, 2008) she situates their writings within the context of the Sámi ethnic 
awakening of the 1960s and 1970s.  
Hirvonen´s work can be seen as part of a global Indigenous counter colonial 
movement of challenging power structures and epistemic control. As the Māori scholar Linda 
Tuhiwai Smith puts it in her groundbreaking book Decolonizing Methodologies: 
Knowledge and power to define what counts as real knowledge lie at the epistemic 
core of colonialism. The challenge for researchers of decolonizing methodologies as 
a set of knowledge-related critical practices is to simultaneously work with colonial 
and Indigenous concepts of knowledge, centring one while centring the other (Smith 
2021, p. xii). 
Working with an Indigenous methodological framework in Sápmi may include engaging 
with themes and topics such as, “Sámi pedagogies in educational institutions and policy”; 
“Sámi philosophies of education in conversation with other indigenous philosophies of 
education”; “Decolonial, counter-colonial, and/or post-colonial philosophies, practices, and 
processes in education”; and “Indigenous methodologies in educational research”. The 
articles in this special issue all work in the critical and creative spirit that Smith suggests by 
working with many of these themes and topics.  
Overview of the special issue  
The special issue spans over a range of these above mentioned philosophical and pedagogical 
ideas and contexts. The following articles explore the widths of contexts in which Sámi 
education takes place and demonstrate through their own particularities how various ideas 
are formed and performed in related ways. 
In the first article “Living and Practising Values of Gratitude and Respect in a Sámi 
Educational Context” Ylva Jannok Nutti and Viktor M. Johansson explore experiences and 
stories told at visits to cold springs with a group of children and educators from a Sámi early 
childhood centre. The article exemplifies how several themes in Sámi education are entwined 
in relation to being at particular sites on the land. Jannok Nutti and Johansson explore how 
the educators, through telling stories, create a sense of being in an adventure at the cold 
springs both for themselves, the children and the researcher. It shows a form of decolonising 
philosophy of education where sustainable traditions and knowledge connect past and 
previous generations. 
In the following article “Å flette og veve med samiske kunnskapsforståelser i 
barnehagen,” by Anne Myrstad, the attention on sustainable knowledge continues by 
Jannok Nutti et al., Introduction, SPEKI, Vol. 1, No. 2 (2024) pp. 116-121 119 
exploring children's participation and interaction with the artistic design of a Sami-inspired 
outdoor area in an urban kindergarten, located in Sápmi. Using a braiding metaphor, Myrstad 
shows how the children in playing with the artistic designs encounter Sámi understanding 
and knowledge in and through the way in which traditional materials are used. The 
installations can be regarded as entrances to Sami understanding of knowledge, where 
material culture is regarded as relational ties between people and the environment. Thinking 
with a braiding metaphor, rooted in indigenous epistemology, the article will discuss how 
Sami knowledge can be understood and emphasized in the education system, in which 
kindergarten is a part of. The article is a contribution to the reconciliation process. Thus, in 
both Jannok Nutti and Johansson’s as well as Myrstad’s contributions, we see how Sámi 
knowledge is present in early childhood education settings where place and materiality 
matters and are part of a lived educational relation. 
In “Contesting hegemonic narratives: The educative power of Indigenous Sámi 
youth’s literary reviews” Saia Stueng takes the questions of lived relations in a different 
direction. She actualises the voices of Sámi youth regarding different narratives about truth 
and reconciliation. Together with the rich meanings of the Sámi concept of gulahallan 
(communication) as well as indigenous readings of pragmatist ideas about truth, she engages 
Sámi youths' voices in reviews of recent literary work. She shows how the youth reviewers 
work with fictional and historical stories to form their own decolonising narratives of truth. 
As in the articles in early childhood settings, she shows how Sámi knowledges in artistic and 
practical contexts create educational moments in contemporary Sámi lives, that allow a 
reflection about their own history and identity. 
The digital spaces for teaching Sámi languages are yet another educational setting 
that Katarina Parfa Koskinen analyses in her article “Since you live in two worlds, it is not 
always easy to tell them apart”. Here, she discusses the simultaneously practical and 
philosophical, challenges in current Sámi language education in online and digital settings. 
“Living in two worlds” has several meanings in her discussion. The teachers, she says, work 
in a colonial matrix while at the same time trying to counteract colonial consequences and 
create connections with land, animals and people even in the digital educational setting. Thus, 
just as land, materiality and place is part of the educational accounts in both Jannok Nutti and 
Johansson´s as well as Myrstad´s contributions, Parfa Koskinen shows that it is equally 
central in Sámi online language education. Moreover, Parfa Koskinen’s article presents 
teachers speaking of the everyday complexities of online language education. Together with 
Stueng’s attention to Sámi youths’ voices, her article provides a further example of Sámi 
experience in everyday educational life.  
In the last full article of this special issue Rauni Äärelä-Vihriälä, Ylva Jannok Nutti 
and Rauna Rahko-Ravantti present their own experiences and work in Sámi teacher 
education. Honouring the spoken and dialogical tradition they engage in a conversation with 
each other and share their experiences as Sámi teacher educators. Their reflections illuminate 
how Sámi traditional education, values, and concepts of learning always are, can, and need 
to be a part of a Sámi teacher education. Their conversation not only sheds light on Sámi 
teacher education but reflects about what a Sámi university education can be. Referring to 
space and place as a common theme in this Special Issue, the authors title their article 
“Making space for students’ learning”. They conclude their reflections with a choir of voices 
speaking about Sámi education and the various philosophical ideas that live in it. 
120 Speki. Nordic Philosophy and Education Review / Speki. Nordisk pedagogisk-filosofisk tidsskrift, Vol. 1, No. 
2 (2024) pp. 116-121 
Although we may seem to present the articles in a somewhat linear manner, going 
from the youngest children, to youth, to teachers, and finally to university students, teacher 
educators and teacher education, we would like the readers to engage in a kind of circular 
engagement through which the various themes are formed. Yoik – a Sámi melodic and vocal 
tradition – is sometimes, at least in modern times, said to be both harmonically and 
philosophically circular in its form and performative practice (Graff 2018; Jernsletten 2004; 
Aubinet 2023). In his book Why Sámi Sing: Knowing through Melodies in Northern Norway 
(Routledge 2023), Stéphane Aubinet combines the voice of a scholar in ethnomusicology 
with the voices of many yoikers who themselves express profound philosophical and 
pedagogical insights. Viktor M. Johansson provides a pedagogical reading of Aubinet’s 
book, in which we get a further sense of the rich sources for thinking about education that 
abound in Sápmi. 
References 
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Balto, A. (2005) Traditional Sámi child rearing in transition: Shaping an new pedagogical 
platform. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples 1(1): 86–105. 
Balto, A. M. (2023). Samisk oppdragelse: Tradisjon, fornyelse, vitalisering [Sámi 
upbringing: Tradition, renewal, vitalisation]. ČálliidLágádus. 
Gaski, H. (2019). Indigenous elders’ perspective and position. Scandinavian Studies, 91(1–
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Graff, O. (2019). “Joik er som en sirkel!” Realitet eller ideologi? Svensk tidskrift för 
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