Sámi Re-Imaginings of Equality in/through Extracurricular Arts Education in Finland

Abstract

The Indigenized arts-based inquiry reported in this article addresses matters of equality in Finland’s extracurricular arts education system, as experienced by Indigenous Sami artists, arts educators, scholars, and community leaders. Challenging national narratives of cultural homogeneity and egalitarianism, this research identifies aspects of this publicly-funded arts education system that function to create, or perpetuate inequality for Sami learners. Employing narrative and joik as analysis approaches, we reflect upon these processes of exclusion in order to envision new possibilities for this national arts education system to not only accommodate Sami learners, but to learn from and together with Indigenous arts, pedagogies, onto-epistemologies and ways of being to enhance equality for all.