Photo: Supporting Indigenous language education in Arctic Finland

From the Arctic Spirit conference Nov. 16 in Rovaniemi, Finland: a session on culturally sustainable education. As in Nunavut, there’s a “big lack” of Saami teachers in Finland’s Saami region, but Ulla Aikio-Puosari, education secretary of Finland’s Saami Parliament, points to some recent successes in the community of Inari. These include language nests for infants and language classes for mothers who then continue learning from their children. Those efforts have been bolstered by Saami language instruction in schools, where teachers—even non-Saami—learn Saami as a second-language in order to teach in Saami. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)