Ale jaskkot eatnigiella : Alkuperäiskansaliikkeen ja saamen kielen merkitys saamelaisten identiteetille

This study examines the Sámi people and the construction of the Sámi identity and the role of language in the cross-border Sámi movement within the context of the international indigenous movement and discourse between 1962 and 2008. The Sámi movement began as a reaction to state assimilation policies. This led to the birth of indigenous processes strengthening the Sámi cultures and languages. Activities across borders and the ethnopolitical processes in each of the Nordic countries in question also formed the basis of the internationalization of the Sámi people. The discourse on indigenous peoples has grown into a question of human rights, which is examined in different national and international contexts. The study is based on ethnographic data that has been collected via interviews, questionnaires and participant observation with the researched people in different meetings and events. Archive and newsprint material are also used. The approach of the study is auto-ethnographic. The post-colonial theories used in the study strive to destabilize power relations and the distinctions of otherness produced by colonialism, and to reclaim both one's own culture and language in the context of the indigenous movement. A standard model for this type of approach was created by Edward W. Said in his 1978 work Orientalism. The central concepts of the analysis are decolonization, otherness, ethnicity and identity. The dissertation consists of four published articles and an introduction. The subject matter is analyzed on three levels: global, European and Nordic. On the global level, the results demonstrate that the indigenous movement has constructed a new understanding of indigenousness with new rights. International treaties have facilitated the unification of new concepts and rights, such as the right to self-determination and language, also helping in transforming them into rights of the Sámi people on a national level. On the Nordic level, aligning the Sámi culture with indigenous discourse became significant for the process of developing the Sámi identity in the Sámi movement. In this process, the Sámi movement made use of Sámi languages in order to mobilize groups of people and to construct relatedness between different Sámi groups. The realization that one s own language is significant to one's culture has resulted in recreating the vitality, visibility and the legitimation of language in society more generally. The migration of the Sámi people from their traditional territories to increasingly multi-ethnic urban areas alters one's relationship to one's own community as the relationship to cultural traditions changes. Among the urban Sámi, who form a group of ‘new Sáminess’, linguistic discrimination and assimilation continue because of the lack of legislative and other effective language policy measures to promote the learning and use of the Sámi language.

Päiväkodin varhaiskasvatussuunnitelma ja johtajuus : Kolmen kunnan päiväkodinjohtajien käsityksiä päiväkodin varhaiskasvatussuunnitelmasta

The research goal is to describe curriculas and leadership in day-care centers. The day-care centers needed to write their own curriculas, when Centre for Research and Development of Welfare and Health published The National Curriculum Guidelines on Early Childhood Education and Care in Finland (ECEC) in 2003. The study tries to review day-care center managers views of day-care centers plans for early childhood education and care in three municipals. The research data was collected in the begining of 2008. In previous researches it was found out that co-operation and employees knowledge of education in day-care centers will define the reality (Nivala). Furthermore sosial reality will be based on discussions (Berger JA Luckmann). The subject was approached by one-way analysis of variance. Views of the day-care center managers was compared to the written plans for early childhood education, it s effect on day-care center s early childhood education and evaluation. Besides day-care center managers views were compared to early childhood education. Day care center manager s (N=40) answers were collected to a questionnaire, where there were mainly structured and some open end questions. Data was analysed with PASW Statistics 17 program. The research results showed that the day-care center managers views of the prosess of writing the plans for early childhood education in the day-care centers varied from each other. In addition there were differences in views how the plan of day-care center s early childhood education effected daily in their early childhood education. Furthermore the results showed that there were differenties in evaluating day-care center s education. Whereas the views of early childhood education were not different between the day-care managers in the three municipals.