PUNISHED: Sweden Boarding school for Sami Children

 Samí journalist and author Ann-Helén Laestadius offers readers a glimpse into the government-backed school system for the Indigenous children of Sweden that has parallels with the U.S. Indian Boarding School Era. Her novel, Punished, follows five Sami children forced to attend a nomad school in the 1950s. The story stays with them into adulthood, where each copes with the physical, mental, and cultural abuse scars just below the surface. Originally published in Swedish, the English translation of Punished is now available. Laestadius joins us for this month’s Native Bookshelf discussion. 

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Indigenous SAMI Christmas

 The Sámi (/ˈsɑːmi/ SAH-mee; also spelled Sami or Saami) are the traditionally Sámi-speaking indigenous peoples inhabiting the region of Sápmi, which today encompasses large northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and of the Kola Peninsula in Russia. The region of Sápmi was formerly known as Lapland, and the Sámi have historically been known in English as Lapps or Laplanders, but these terms are regarded as offensive by the Sámi, who prefer their own endonym, e.g. Northern Sámi Sápmi.^[8][9] Their traditional languages are the Sámi languages, which are classified as a branch of the Uralic language family.

A Sea Sámi man from Norway by Prince Roland Bonaparte in 1884