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Norway's “Sámi Language Act”: Emancipatory implications for the world's aboriginal peoples

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2009

David Corson
David Corson
Affiliation:
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 252 Bloor Street West, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1V6, Canada
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Abstract

The Sámi (formerly called Lapps) are the indigenous people of Arctic Scandinavia and northwest Russia. Legislation giving major language and cultural rights to Norway's Sámi people was enacted in 1992. As an introduction to discussion of the impact of the Sámi Language Act on Norwegian education, this article begins with an outline of the schooling system in Norway. Its review of the act itself covers the following topics: the Sámi culture and the Sámi languages, social and political problems that affect the Sámi, the place of the Sámi languages in education, and recent educational changes that flow from the Sámi Language Act. Three research questions, covering the practice and organization of bilingual aboriginal education in Norway, are then addressed at length. The article concludes by drawing emancipatory implications from the Sámi experience for members of aboriginal cultures and for the future of aboriginal education generally. (Power and culture, Sámi culture, minority education, native language education, bilingual education)

Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , September 1995 , pp. 493 - 514
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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