Teaching Social Sustainability and About Sweden’s Sami Peoples in Senior Secondary School

Abstract

This chapter outlines an action research project conducted in a Social Studies classroom in a Senior Secondary School in South Sápmi, Sweden. The teacher researcher had noted that despite some of the students identifying as Sami, there was a lack of awareness about Sami history and culture, and that when Sami peoples were referred to it was often in discriminatory and derogatory terms. The unit of lessons aimed to increase the students’ knowledge of Sami life both historically and presently, and awareness of how prejudice and stereotyping are used to ‘other’ certain groups to justify exploitation and oppression. Using the ‘Educating yourself in Empowerment for Sustainability’ tool and designing leaner centred and collaborative activities this research found that when students’ knowledge of Sami life increases, their prejudicial ideas about Sami peoples decrease.

10.1 Introduction

Despite the polar region and three most northern counties of Sweden being home to most of Sweden’s Sami population of between 20,000–40,000 people (Sametinget, 2014), many who live in those areas and do not identify as Sami, admit to lacking an understanding of Sami culture. With a long history of conflicting interests between the Sami and the non-Sami in Sweden comes a high prevalence of prejudice and discrimination directed toward Sami people. Teachers play an important role in changing this narrative, to halt prejudice and discrimination, and to engage their students with greater understanding of both Sami culture and the historical and ongoing injustices experienced by Sweden’s Indigenous people (Schlosberg & Carruthers, 2010). A socially sustainable society is based on equality, equity, human rights and ensures all people a good life (United Nations, n.d.). Further, we know that solidarity and cooperation is necessary to achieve sustainability (Quiroz-Niño & Murga-Menoyo, 2017).

One of the authors of this chapter – a Social Studies teacher in a senior secondary school in Sweden’s South Sapmi had observed that in the school they worked that when Sami peoples were referred to it was often in discriminatory and derogatory terms and there appeared to be a lack of awareness about Sami history and culture. From that starting point an action research project, was undertaken to answer the following questions:

How can students from diverse backgrounds increase their knowledge and understanding of Sami cultures and peoples?

Will that, in turn, decrease prejudicial attitudes being expressed in a senior secondary social studies class?

This chapter will begin by providing a very brief history of the oppression and displacement of Sweden’s Sami peoples. This chapter then describes an action research project conducted in a senior secondary school class in the north of Sweden.¹ We will introduce the rationale and aims for the action research project, highlight some of the lessons conducted and discuss how student attitudes towards and understanding of Sami culture, and the history of prejudice and oppression was changed.

10.2 A Short History of the Oppression and Displacement of Sweden’s Sami Peoples

The Sami peoples have been living in parts of what today is known as Sápmi for more than 2500 years. In what is now Sweden, Sami peoples have been forced to pay taxes to different rulers from at least the fourteenth century, sometimes to several rulers simultaneously, all claiming to have the right to tax the lands. In 1673 the state sought to speed up the colonization of Sami lands and allowed every (non-Sami) farmer who settled in Sápmi an exemption from having to pay taxes and serving in the military for 15 years. This is when the Sami displacement from their lands began in earnest.

During the early part of the twentieth century a number of different mandates further eroded traditional Sami life and increased the oppression and exploitation of Sami culture and land. Sami children were forcibly removed from their families to attend boarding schools which made it difficult to keep the culture and language alive. Often race biologists studying the Sami (by using methods such as measuring Sami skulls for example) considered them to be an underdeveloped race and advocated forced sterilisation (Samer, n.d). In 1919 when the union between Sweden and Norway was dissolved, the natural migration patterns of reindeer were stopped, making reindeer husbandry and finding grazing lands much more difficult. The state attempted to solve this by forcing people to move from one part of Sweden to another, which at times, triggered conflict between different Sami groups over the scarce grazing lands (Harning, 2019; SVT, 2017). Not all Sami historically engaged in reindeer husbandry, Sami people were and remain farmers, craftsmen, involved in fishing or any number of other occupations. More recently conflicts between government and corporate interests and Sami interests remain (Pinto-Guillaume, 2017). For example, reindeer grazing areas are disturbed and destroyed by modern forestry methods such as clearcutting and plowing that destroys both ground and tree lichen (Eriksson & Moen, 2008), mining (Lawrence & Kløcker Larsen, 2017), hydroelectric power generation, and building of large water reservoirs.

The continuing discrimination of Sami today has been investigated by the Swedish governmental agency Diskrimineringsombudsmannen (DO, 2008, 2010, 2014) [The Discrimination Ombudsman]. DO found that historical government policies and structures were still having a great effect on Sami peoples living conditions. The legacy of these policies shows how Sami capacities to influence their own lives has been limited and the Sami have experienced discrimination in all areas of society that were investigated: the media, work life, health care, aged care, education, contact with authorities, the justice system and in community life (for example in grocery stores, in contact with landlords). DO concluded that the Swedish government must do more to ensure Sami influence on issues concerning them and fight the discrimination and the prejudice that these are based on. This is the minimum requirement, if the Swedish state is to adhere to international conventions on human rights. The Swedish government has acknowledged the Sami as an indigenous people and have agreed to follow the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP, n.d.), but have not yet signed the International Labour Organization’s Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (ILO-convention 69 or C169) that would give the Sami greater control of their traditional lands (Samer, 2015, 2018, 2020).

While this brief context has focused on the oppression and displacement of the Sami in Sweden there has been some cooperation and understanding between many Sami and non-Sami and also the Swedish government has begun attempting to redress the issues. However, this is important work that can never be viewed as completed. Without consistent, open and honest education about the colonizing legacies that have resulted in continuing discrimination and prejudice this cycle will continue.

In addition to this, as more students with diverse backgrounds enter schools in Sweden’s north, we see a great need for educating people and working to overcome racist and prejudiced ideas about other minority groups (in the upper secondary school that this research took place in there are an increasing number of students that recently arrived from Somalia, Afghanistan and other places for example). Further we recognise the importance of teaching that “position of indigenous and minority peoples’ in society can generally be characterised by powerlessness” (Balto & Østmo, 2012, p.2).

10.3 Methodology

This action research study utilised elements of ethnographic lesson study, self study and case study research (Freebody, 2003), conducted by the researcher who worked as a teacher in a senior secondary school in the Jämtland region of South Sápmi, Sweden. Action research (AR) is a form of research used by teachers (and of course other types of practitioners) that is a knowledge producing practice that has the potential to be ‘practice changing practice’ (Kemmis, 2009, p. 464). Kemmis (2009) further explains:

People involved in critical action research aim to change their social worlds collectively, by thinking about it differently, acting differently, and relating to one another differently by constructing other architectures to enable and constrain their practice in ways that are more sustainable, less sustainable (p.471)

AR is not only a practice-based form of research but is often concerned with increasing equality (Adelman, 2014). This particular project draws upon the notion considered importance for the improvement and/or transformation of people’s actions and attitudes at a local level (Cohen et al., 2018). Arising from the teacher/researcher’s observations that the students encountered each day had little understanding of Sami life or history, this research clearly aimed to increase knowledge about and understanding of Sami peoples’ lived experiences. The project therefore quite deliberately hoped to “highlight the perspectives of excluded knowledge systems by bringing Indigneous knowledge into [the] educational systems” (Nutti, 2018, p.84).

Action research is a type of reflective inquiry that can be conceptualised in three phases whereupon the researcher at the most basic level, ‘looks’ – ‘acts’ – ‘thinks’ (Stringer, 2008; Woodland, 2018). The ‘looking’ phase provided the opportunity for the teacher/researcher to comprehend the just how much the students knew and understood about Sami life. This stage – the looking – of this particular AR project was conducted for many months. The ‘act’ stage was conducted after a series of lessons (Appendix 1) were planned and taught which will be further outlined in the next section. Finally the teacher/researcher in collaboration with a colleague was able to ‘think’ about the success of teaching and learning of the series of lessons with the help of utilising observation notes and reflections.

This action research project was conducted in a class of 20 students taking the subject Samhällskunskap – Social Science in senior Secondary school. The group consisted of those identifying themselves as: both Sami and Swedish; Swedish with different strong village identities (often with prejudice about people from other villages), and people not identifying themselves as either Sami nor Swedish and with different ethnic and national origins such as Somali, Afghan, and Nepalese for example.

Data was collected in a number of ways in this project and because it was part of a teaching unit has been de-identified in order to protect the anonymity of the school students The students were aware that the teacher researcher was conducting this action research project on the teaching unit, and as such would be collecting data in the form of observation and reflective notes on classes, short informal post-lesson interviews, demonstration of learning in class discussions and activities and assessed tasks. Because all these sources of data were in Swedish they were translated by the authors of this chapter.

10.4 Theoretical Background and the Rationale for the Educational Plan

UNESCO (2019) defines Education for Sustainable Development as that which,

empowers learners to take informed decisions and responsible actions for environmental integrity, economic viability and a just society, for present and future generations, while respecting cultural diversity. It is about lifelong learning, and is an integral part of quality education. ESD is holistic and transformational education which addresses learning content and outcomes, pedagogy and the learning environment. It achieves its purpose by transforming society (paragraph 1).

After identifying the focus of the action research project, a wide literature was sought to inform the educational plan – the action. This literature was drawn from a range of education for sustainable development (ESD) perspectives (journal articles, UN reports, websites etc) and the plan was guided by UNESCO’s (2017) ESD for SD goals. The starting point for the literature search came from the course reading in a Masters of Education for Sustainable Development program.

Ultimately the plan, using a range of literature, was designed with the dual purpose to increase knowledge of and decrease prejudice towards Sami people and culture, and to start addressing notions of environmental justice and care (Gottschlich & Bellina, 2017). Surveying a wide range of literature served the purpose, as Sarivaara et al. (2014) suggest to find different ways of seeing.

Although referring to Environmental Education (EE) specifically Wals et al. (2008), outline education for sustainability (or ‘Learning for Sustainable Development- LSD’) as being either instrumental or emancipatory. Instrumental education is that which includes predetermined content and “starts by formulating specific goals in terms of preferred behaviour, and regards the ‘target group’ as mainly passive receivers’” (Wals et al., 2008, p.56). In contrast emancipatory (sustainability) education attempts to “engage citizens in active dialogue to establish co-owned objectives, shared meanings and a joint self-determined plan of action to make changes that they themselves consider desirable” (Wals et al., 2008, pp. 56–57). Emancipatory education is democratic, inclusive, collaborative, creative, critical, and analytic. It was important for this plan of action to be a combination of both emancipatory and instrumental education in order to show that different educational concepts as were just different perspectives rather than competing opinions.

There are many benefits of using both instrumental methods to develop knowledge, awareness and skills to address specific sustainability challenges and emancipatory methods to promote transformative, action-oriented, collaborative, participatory learning to develop key competencies in order to identify possible solutions (Wals et al., 2008; Wals, 2012; Wals & Benavot, 2017). Different political, economic and social circumstances and different purposes require different types of learning for sustainability and as schools are “embedded in their communities, seeking to influence not only the views and actions of learners who walk their halls” (Wals & Benavot, 2017, p.410) but also the broader communities within which those schools are situated.

Additionally, the concept of learning as transformation (i.e., transformative learning) as described by Mezirow (2000), provided another framing for the educational plan. Mesirow explains that the focus of transformative learning “is on how we learn to negotiate and act on our own purposes, values, feelings and meanings rather that those we have uncritically assimilated from others” (Mezirow, 2000, p.8). This type of learning requires us to recognise and modify the assumptions and beliefs that frame our own world view and inform the actions we may take, and also, importantly, also those of others (Peters & Wals, 2016). It was intended for the learners in the classroom to become more aware of “their problematic understandings and beliefs, more critically reflective on their assumptions and those of others, more fully and freely engaged in discourse, and more effective in taking action on their reflective judgements” (Byrne, 2016, p.5). The teacher researcher here wanted the learning group to become collaborative learners and “critically assess the validity of norms from alternative perspectives, arrive at best tentative judgments through discourse, and effectively act on them” (Mezirow, 2000, p.11).

Considering these theoretical perspectives on learning, two main influences informed the planning of the teaching unit (Appendix 1Sec11) in this action research process: the “EYE for Sustainability” tool (Tassone & Wals, 2014), and learner-centred activities.

10.5 EYE for Sustainability

The EYE (‘Educating Yourself in Empowerment’) for Sustainability learning tool presented by Tassone and Wals (2014) provided a starting point for designing the series of lessons. Inspired by established concepts “within the fields of transformative learning, emancipatory education and empowerment… ..[and] developed using classroom experience gained while attempting to awaken personal engagement for sustainability in learners” (p.127), this tool provided a clear direction and parameters of the series of lessons. There are four ongoing and interrelated key elements of the EYE learning tool: understanding, awakening, positioning and enacting that as can be seen in Fig. 10.1.

Fig. 10.1

The EYE for Sustainability (EYES) learning tool (Tassone & Wals, 2014, p.129)

The teacher aimed to provide lessons that explicitly included opportunities for ‘understanding’ of particular knowledge related to Sami history and culture, ‘awakening’ to previously unknown events and circumstances and a fostering of personal agency, and ‘positioning’ involving an encouragement to (re) position themselves in accordance to what they have learned (Tassone & Wals, 2014). Ensuring that the class activities had an EYE for Sustainability allowed for students to “become more aware of the context of their problematic understandings and beliefs, more critically reflective on their assumptions and those of others, more fully and freely engaged in discourse, and more effective in taking action on their reflective judgements” (Mezirow, 2000, p.29). Finally providing opportunities for the students to actively engage in creating a socially cohesive classroom environment was considered the “Enacting” phase of the learning. The goal for this educational plan, like the EYES tool was to “guide learners to become agents of change in a world in need” (Tassone & Wals, 2014, p.134).

The types of activities to be planned were also considered in light of Wals’ (2006) eight criteria important for learning in ESD:

• Total immersion (learning by doing),

• Diversity in learning styles (to be sensitive to different learning styles in a group),

• Active participation (dialogue, ownership of the learning process),

• The value of valuing (develop and reflect on values, motivation),

• Balancing the far and near (education and activities rooted in the life experience of the learner at the same time as developing an understanding of environmental issues at a global level),

• A case-study approach (by focusing on one concrete issue in depth, the learner can develop meaning and understanding),

• The social dimensions of learning (learning in dialogue and social interaction, rethinking ideas in the light of alternatives) and

• Learning for action (developing action competence, by taking charge of some issues students can develop a sense of power and control, to participate/contribute to a democratic society).

10.6 Learner-Centred Activities

The main goal of ESD is to “empower learners to take informed decisions and responsible actions for environmental integrity, economic viability and a just society, for present and future generations, while respecting cultural diversity” (UNESCO, 2019 para.1). Thus, designing learner-centred activities was thought to be.

especially applicable in assisting the students to process complex and challenging information from many disciplines; synthesize and apply knowledge to solve problems; consider diverse human perspectives, cultures and scenarios; and identify their own personal ethics, attitudes and desired actions pertaining to human-environment relationships. Successful achievement of these outcomes would require that students be purposeful, reflective, and highly engaged participants in their own learning (Byrne, 2016, p.5).

With a focus on enabling students to take responsibility for their own learning, learner-centred activities would also “increase the chances that the students will be motivated to change their behaviour and affective dimensions related to sustainability” (Byrne, 2016, p.5). However, the teacher plays an important role in facilitating students’ learning by providing and allowing students to discover information as well as uncover and construct meaning to the information that is accessed. Teachers must also allow opportunities for students to practice skills as well as pose questions and provide guidance for students to become more aware of their own thinking.

Tassone and Wals (2014) also point out the importance of a classroom climate that is safe and trustworthy, encouraging dialogue and mutual support. The educator has the role of “a coach, helping the learners define their motivations and deal with adversity” (Tassone & Wals, 2014, p.136). Additionally, McBride (2015) in review of international evidence on prejudice reduction interventions, showed that peer-based learning is effective in reducing prejudice. It was anticipated that engaging students with peer-based and learner-centred activities would therefore be effective for students learning about Sami history and their current situation, as a way of reducing prejudice myths and stereotypes (Monteith & Yau, 2005).

Discussion based activities such as gathering the students in small groups and pairs to talk to each other, and whole class discussions, solve problems, share reflections, debate issues, synthesize information and teach each other were the main focus. This concept of learner-based methods influenced the whole educational plan, with the intention of reducing prejudice and increasing social cohesion in combination with learning about othering and how prejudices form, and doing activities together as a group (Fig. 10.2).

Fig. 10.2

EYES lessons focusing on social sustainability

10.7 Findings and Discussion

The activities that were designed to increase the students’ awareness of the history of oppression experienced by Sweden’s Sami peoples exposed a number of interesting findings. The students in this particular Senior secondary school class displayed changes in their understandings of a) Sami history and notions of colonisation that they previously had relegated to the histories of ‘colonising countries’ such as England, Spain and Portugal, and b) an increased awareness of (living) Sami culture such as belief systems and language. These findings will guide the discussion that follows.

10.8 Misconceptions of Sami History

At the beginning of this series of lessons some students claimed in whole class discussions that they knew “practically nothing about the Sami” (translated quote) and interestingly, the students that had not grown up in Sweden appeared more curious and interested in Sami culture and history. However, all the students were surprised that they were unaware of certain facts about Sami history and culture. They claimed that they did not know that there are so many different groups of Sami and that, historically, many survived by fishing and farming, not just by reindeer herding. Other misconceptions or omissions in early class discussions included ideas that the Sami were once more respected and played an important part in the fur trade in Europe, and that there were female hunters. The students were not aware that the Sami had historically had to pay tax to three or four rulers, and that the Sami Parliament does not legally have much power over issues concerning the Sami.

Listening to the podcast Om Samisk historia (About Sami history) that gives a comprehensive overview to the historic oppression of the Sami stirred the emotions of all the students. After listening the most common reaction was to express shock, in both whole class discussion and post lesson interviews, that they had not been aware of this history before. This type of reaction became even stronger after watching three episodes of Samernas tid (The time of the Sami), where the Sami peoples became more ‘real’ and as one of the students claimed “made the history come alive” (translated quote). After listening to the podcast and watching the documentary episodes, students were asked their opinions on Sami history. Two students expressed views that the interests of modern society should come before Sami rights (such as creating jobs by developing mining) which led to a debate where other students argued that Sami interests should be privileged for social justice and when taking environmental considerations in to concern. These two activities seemed to significantly increase the knowledge and awareness about Sami history and culture and many of the students sympathized with the plight of the Sami people.

After watching a video titled Australia’s Aboriginal People’s Struggle, the students were able to identify the poor treatment of Australian Indigenous peoples and draw parallels to the injustices the Sami have lived through. One student pointed out that it was strange that they -the school students in the north of Sweden- “already had some knowledge about the Australian Aboriginal people and their poor treatment at the hands of colonial powers but not that the Sami had been similarly mistreated” (translated quote). A class discussion on why this was the case followed and the conclusion reached was that the Swedish state had not put much effort in to showing this part of history and as one student claimed “probably because it was not a history to be proud of” (translated quote). Many students were disturbed to learn that the Sami were forcefully removed from areas that they had lived in for hundreds of years, to make way for mining and settling. One student commented

In a larger perspective, one really thinks of Sweden as a country that hasn’t been engaged in any large scale imperialism compared to colonial powers such as Great Britain. But the truth is that we have, the Swedish government, has driven an imperialistic policy within its own country (translated quote).

10.9 Increased Understanding of Sami Culture, Beliefs and Language

That Sami were forced to give up their own belief systems to become Christian was also seen as concerning, while many were curious to learn about the Sami belief systems and their close relationship to the natural world which was closely tied to nature. Many students had adverse reactions when presented with ideas of race biology and fact that Sami were subjected to physical examinations and sterilisation. One student raised their hand and expressed the conclusion to the class their belief that “it was awful that it had even existed and even worse that it originated in Sweden since this gave the Nazi’s “scientific evidence” to murder Jews” (translated quote). This student continued to reason about how it must have been to experience this type of prejudice and treated as a lower race, and empathised “that it is no wonder there’s a much higher rate of depression and suicide among Sami” (translated quote). Equally upsetting to many students was learning about the poor conditions in the boarding schools that kept Sami children away from their parents and forbid them to speak their own language. As one student expressed it:

It’s difficult to imagine what it was like to come to a school and be forced to speak Swedish when the only language you knew was Sami. And at the same time, at such a young age, be forced to be away from your parents and your roots. Unreasonable (translated quote).

All the students upon learning about historical and ongoing injustices, agreed that the historical and current injustices were appalling.

The radio programme Jävla vitskallar! (Damn Whiteheads!) (Nechma, 2020) flipped perspectives around for the many of the students, especially those who identified as Swedish. This story of how Swedish people that lived in Spain were “the immigrants” and that the Spanish people held prejudices about them because their country of origin made them the ‘other’. In the discussion that followed, students compared the prejudices expressed by the Spanish people about the Swedes and realized that it was exactly the same type of prejudice typically expressed about immigrants in Sweden. In this whole class discussion one student pointed out the parallels of stereotypes described such as: “they keep to themselves, speak their own language, have their own restaurants and schools, cause trouble, don’t integrate etc” (translated quote). Four students of Swedish origin confided in the teacher after this class that they felt that they better understood that when moving to a new country, it might be comforting to be around fellow countrymen that speak your language.

This activity of changing perspective when paired with learning about how prejudices form and how we use stereotypes and norms to make sense of the world, had an eye-opening effect on the students. Many agreed with the sentiment that “you can’t lump people together based on the one fact that they’ve moved to a place and that if you don’t speak to or socialise with people, it’s easy to develop prejudice about them” (translated quote). The students suggested that to solve this, people should socialise more to get to know each other and learn more about each other which aligns with Hosokawa’s (2012) claim that cultural self-knowledge development has the effect of reducing prejudice. Learning about othering, most students expressed understanding that this was really just a way to ratify exploiting and oppressing people “for example using racism to justify colonialism” (translated quote), which opened their eyes even further as to how these mechanisms work.

10.10 Conclusion

The action research outlined in this chapter, was born from one teacher’s desire to increase the students’ understanding and awareness of the Sami peoples in Sweden, their history which involves displacement, oppression and prejudice, and the ongoing nature of that oppression and prejudice. Arising from the teacher/researcher’s observations that the students encountered each day had little understanding of Sami life or history, this research clearly aimed to increase knowledge about and understanding of Sami peoples’ lived experiences. Action research was chosen for two reasons: (1) to theoretically inform a unit of work addressing important to social sustainability focused learning outcomes in a Social Science classroom that responded to the issues that had been noted; (2) for the improvement and/or transformation of people’s actions and attitudes at a local level (Cohen et al., 2018). The activities described above were just part the of a larger unit on Sami life. Several other activities were planned and undertaken to varying degrees. However due to the 2020 pandemic some important activities could not occur that included: cooking using traditional Sami cold smoking, and picking berries and mushroom (vegetarian and non-vegetarian option); a visit to a Sami village to take part in a traditional reindeer separation; and a visit from the current president of the Sami Parliament Youth Council.

The series of lesson was guided by the EYES learning tool (Tassone & Wals, 2014) and focused on empowering students’ understanding, awakening, positioning, enacting. Learner-centred methods focusing on student discussions were chosen as it was important to consider diverse human perspectives and cultures as well as identifying personal attitudes, ethics and desired actions (Byrne, 2016). Additionally, it has been found that peer-based learning and settings is an efficient way of reducing prejudice (McBride, 2015).

It was clear before these lessons that students lacked real knowledge and understanding of Sami history and culture and that knowledge and understanding increased after the learning activities. The collaborative learning opportunities (the discussions) among the students enabled them to more deeply understand different aspects of Sami culture and history, and in particular the history of prejudice and oppression and were able to discuss the reasons for and consequences of this. For example, the students realized that Sweden has behaved as an oppressive, colonialist state and were surprised they had not learnt about this part of history before. They concluded that the oppression of the Sami, historically as well as today, was appalling. Students also learned about, discussed and compared the oppression of other Indigenous peoples (in this case Australian Aboriginal peoples) to that of the Sami, realising there were many similarities.

It was also important that the history of prejudice and oppression of the Sami was not just relegated to being a case of historical tragedy for these students. Listening to a radio documentary about Swedish people living in Spain paired with learning about how prejudice and stereotypes form, was a further eye-opener that made students realise how easy it is to assume things about “the other”. They came to learn that the prejudices the being expressed about the Swedish in Spain were the same as those expressed about immigrants in Sweden. Taking this kind of othering discourse the students could identify that these kind of racist ideas seemed to stem from, or prosper when different groups did not have the chance to interact with each other. The students also had practical experiences of how othering works as well as taking part in activities to increase social cohesion among them. In addition to this, students took action to reduce prejudice and increase integration by in small groups performing an activity of their choice.

Appendix 1 Summary of Social Sustainability Unit