#saemieh

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spent the evening working on my sïlpe-gapta. It's almost finished now! My sister's started on her sïlpe-gåptoe as well, we've got four weeks to go now until the fashion show.

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Aellieh saemesth - Or how the schools are killing our languages

Reading the news this morning was hard; what with the ongoing Breivik court case and everything else from back home, I would have preferred to not also have to read about things that in many ways resonate with my own school experiences. Yesterday, two brothers at a school in Liksjoe (Lycksele, Sweden) were forbidden to speak their indigenous language with each other, something which happened in my school as well, when I grew up.

When I grew up, speaking any language but Swedish meant spending the afternoon in detention where you would be told off for not thinking about the Swedish majority's feelings - it was always assumed that we had been trash-talking Swedes if we dared use another language - and this in turn was then used as a way to deny people the right to study their own languages at all.

And by denying us the right to speak our highly endangered languages, they're effectively killed off. In a world where intra-generational language transmission is coming to a halt, the schools have a vital role to play in the revitalization of our languages and this shows that Sweden as a nation simply couldn't care less.

Before I go into any great detail about the news, however, let's all remember that I am 25 years old and that it's only nine years since I left the Swedish compulsory school system. Nine years is a very short time and yet for a country which constantly portrays itself as a Jeanne of Arc of human rights and equality, one would think that the days of forbidden languages would be long gone.

But apparently I was wrong.

Knowing how to speak, write and read your language is an important part of developing your own identity - if you cannot use your own language, you'll likely try to suppress the parts of it that you've been denied.

To forbid someone from speaking their own language is to take their voice and ritually kill it in front of their eyes: it is the physical manifestation of a negative answer to Spivak's question ‘Can the Subaltern Speak ?’

Now as back then, the reason as to why the school outlawed the speaking of any other language but Swedish can be summed up as a vague ‘it's to support immigrants who otherwise wouldn't learn how to speak Swedish properly’ and now as then this claim is completely wrong and only shows how ingrained the idea of the divine Swede is in Swedish society.

Even when we actively discriminate against others, we frame it in a way where our actions can be interpreted as a way of aiding the poor non-Swedes. Sweden is a prime example of a country who still believes and actively promotes the idea of a white man's burden and there have been so many obvious examples of this in the news as of lately that I'm starting to reconsider my decision to move back to Sweden if I end up with the paid PhD I'm short-listed for. 

Fuck it all to hell.

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I need to pester my sister later today

As she's currently doing a student teacher placement and she's supposed to follow a girl who is going to start studying a Saami language this week - she doesn't know yet if the girl is supposed to study South, Ume or North Saami, but either way, I am going to bum my sister to copy as many of the things they use as possible, because why not. Also, this means that my sister gets Saami language lessons, some five years after she graduated from upper sec. 

Justice at last or something.

As long as it's not North Saami. Just kidding.

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Members of the Saami community who want to celebrate their national day in Norway

have to apply for a day off, as most employers fear that acknowledging the country's indigenous people's right to celebrate their existence by giving them the day off might encourage other minorities to demand days off.

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Despite the fact that Norway has the largest Saami population in the world, there's only one single Saami establishment to be found in the Norwegian capital

and that's a nursery school.

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Gapta - The South Saami traditional dress

Men:

Budtestahke - the welted edge around the v-neck of a gapta.

Gåahke - the collar is most often red and always stiff. 

Boengeskuvmie - a piece of clothing worn around the neck, embroidered with pewter wires.

Beelte - a belt, embroidered with pewter wires or beads, depending on your age.

Voedtegh - handwoven shoelaces.

Tjohpe - a traditional hat worn by men and women alike; men wear blue or black tjohpeh, whereas women wear red ones

Women: 

A woman's gapta is identical to a male's gapta, bar the lack of a gåahke, the addition of laesta, decorative edgings added to the dress and the fact that it's longer than a man's gapta.