Doctoral dissertation

Ph.D. monograph: "Boarding School Education of the Sámi People in the Soviet Union (1935–1989): Experiences of Three Generations”

My doctoral dissertation entitled "Boarding School Education of the Sámi People in the Soviet Union (1935–1989): Experiences of Three Generations” examines boarding school policies introduced on the Sámi people in the Soviet Union from 1935 to 1989. On the basis of field and archival research on the Kola Peninsula and in Moscow, conducted over the course of 2014 and 2015, the study offers historical accounts and experiences of residential schooling among three generations of the Sámi people in Russia. Through Sámi oral accounts, archival documents, as well as Soviet, Russian and Western sources, the dissertation explores a series of rapid policy changeovers in the boarding school education of the Sámi. By focusing on two surpassing but contradictory tendencies in boarding school education of the Sámi, the study cultivates notion of residential schooling as a tool for coeval empowerment and assimilation of indigenous peoples and their languages. The study finds that long-term separation of children and parents in result of residential education caused severe disintegration of an indigenous family as social arena for cultural and language transference across three studied generations.

I submitted dissertation in December 2018 and defended in May 2019. PhD dissertation is available here: https://munin.uit.no/handle/10037/15101

MA thesis: "Forced relocations of the Kola Sámi people: background and consequences"

In my Master’s thesis I analyse the background and consequences of the relocation policies imposed on the Kola Sámi people. The forced relocations of the Kola Sámis in this work are presented in a two-staged process implying that the main policies, leading to gradual spatial rearrangement of the Sámi traditional settlement patterns and its further displacement. Another purpose of this work is to discuss the ways in which the Kola Sámi community was affected by the forced relocations. The decades of relocations represent a turning point in history of the Sámi community as associated with the new society-building patterns, restructuring traditional economies and need for active cultural and language preservation today. The Kola Sámi community faced the loss of their resource territories, disruption of traditional activities’ practice along with strong influences of multicultural environment on language and culture as the impacts of forced relocation policies. The change in geographical distribution of the Sámi settlements has also caused shifts in communities’ social organization and land use patterns. The current work addresses implementation of the Soviet policies of forced relocations on the Kola Sámi people and touches upon the occurred consequences.

I defended MA thesis in June 2013. MA thesis is available here: https://munin.uit.no/handle/10037/5241

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse