Sámi children as thought herders: philosophy of death and storytelling as radical hope in early childhood education

Abstract

This article follows a story played out by children at a Sámi early childhood centre in north Sweden. It does so by reflecting on the children’s story as a form of Critical Indigenous Philosophy. In particular it explores what it could mean for a child to be a philosopher in a Sámi context by developing the concept of jurddavázzi, or thought herder, in conversation with Wittgenstein’s method of ‘leading’, and Cavell’s of ‘shepherding’, ‘words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use’. The children’s play story – involving themes of death, struggles with natural surroundings, and interconnectivity through seeing life in nature – is read in relation to questions about traditional stories raised in the poetry of the Sámi poet, artist and philosopher, Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, or Áillohaš. The article ends by discussing how the children’s invitation to follow their story can be seen as a decolonizing pedagogical gesture of the child that requires a particular kind of philosophical listening by the teacher or adult. The article is in its style an attempt to demonstrate a form of philosophical storytelling the children are engaged in.

Barnets (o)fria undran. Vilka ramar ger läroplanerna för barn att utforska religiösa och existentiella frågor i finska, norska och svenska förskolor?

“…som är etnocentriska (McKinnon, 2002, s. 63) och att religionsbegreppet ges en modern västerländsk gestalt vars tillämpningar är problematiska i förhållande till icke-västliga och urfolks traditioner, tanke-och livssätt (Johansson, 2022;Mienna Sjöberg, 2022;Nergård, 2006;Smith, 1978). För att undvika problemen med att definiera religionsbegreppet och samtidigt vara öppna för barnets möjlighet till undran som ofta rör sig mellan och bortom avgränsade kategoriseringar låter vi begreppet vara så öppet som möjligt.…”

an open-ended story of some hidden sides of listening or (what) are we really (doing) with childhood?

“…Should we have looked deeper into the unexpected? Or was it a question of listening more While Viktor Johansson (2021) draws our attention to other places we might be philosophising with children , we want to bring his questions back into the place of school, to the issue that children's philosophy is already there and to what we did with the found object at the Conference. Building on this movement, we then invite the readers to ask what philosophy might this be, why it remains hidden and whether it is our place as adults to try to listen to it.…”