Sami pupils in special schools

My worst memories are the lessons when I was seated at my desk and did not understand anything at all. Everything flew over my head. The teachers neither had knowledge about deaf people nor sign language, so I was not given any teaching at all. Just a thing as understanding when the other pupils got up to sing. How could I know what singing was when I had never heard it?

I might have been the very first from Kautokeino to be sent to a school for deaf. .... Only then did I realize that I was deaf and that there were also more people who were deaf. ...

No one from my family came to Trondheim to see how I was doing in the School for deaf. My mother never came, not even for my confirmation. ...

It was talked little about Sami in the school for deaf. Still I did not experience being Sami as a problem. Neither that it was difficult to adapt to a Norwegian culture. It simply was not a theme. ...

Today I feel Sami, not Norwegian, although I do not know the language. I use Norwegian. My schooling distanced me from my own culture, but do remember that it was necessary. In Kautokeino there was neither knowledge nor an offer for deaf students. The alternative would have been no schooling at all. Then what? It hurts having lost my language and my culture, but I was given another language in which I can communicate. I have also found a cultural belonging in a deaf environment. When I meet my family I wish I knew Sami. But at that time Sami in the School for deaf was not an option. And far from everybody in my family could learn sign language. ...

My parents had to learn a completely new language to be able to communicate with me. ... I think it was even more difficult because we are Sami. The sign language makes use of lip postures and words from Norwegian. And it is a separate language with a special grammatical construction. It was not easy for them to be in a Norwegian environment and speak Norwegian in signs with me.

Until they reached as far as learning sign language they used speech with signs. It was difficult for them to know whether to use Sami or Norwegian. They also worried that they would have to move to allow me to get teaching in sign language. They understood that it would not be possible for me to learn Norwegian and Sami automatically. I did not hear the language. ...

In kindergarten the other children learned signs together with me. I played with the children from my neighborhood, and we could communicate because the municipality gave priority to sign language training. It was mostly pointing and simple signs for playing, food and so on. ... I remember there were posters in the kindergarten with signs for different kind of food, spreads and clothes and such things. But it was in Norwegian. And then there was the alphabet. Later on they made a Sami sign alphabet. ...

Juhan Niillas ice fishing (Photo: Linn Sophie Helmersen)

– I started school in a Norwegian-speaking class. My mother and father have said that it was important that I would get as good training in Norwegian and sign language as possible. ... I was moved to a Sami-speaking class later on because my environment at home is Sami. It was important that I would not loose my Sami belonging. The Norwegian-speaking class was foreign to me. I understood Sami with signs and my friends were all in the Sami-speaking class. ...

In school there were two Sami teachers who went to seminars to learn sign language. But I had to have an interpretor, because it takes time to learn a language. I got an interpretor who had a Sami background and deaf parents. She spoke Norwegian and sign language, but understood Sami and occasionally Sami with signs. She had grown up with the deaf culture. But it was not enjoyable to have to have a grown up person with me all the time because I could not understand what the others were saying. But that is how it is to be deaf in a school for the hearing.

... – I went to primary school in Karasjok. When I was about to start lower secondary school I did not get an interpretor anymore. The interpretor moved away from the village and the teachers I had in primary school did not follow to the lower secondary school. The solution was Trondheim and the School for the deaf. In Karasjok I would not have been able to complete the lower secondary school without an interpretor. The municipality had announced a position, but there are not many people who master both Sami and sign language. No one applied for the position.

The transition from Karasjok to Trondheim was great. ... I had difficulties understanding Norwegian and had to start almost from scratch. The others in my class had come much further than me. Besides Sami was not continued as a subject in the School for the deaf. It stopped there, and I never learned to write and read Sami properly.

As most of the other children who lived outside the village, I had to live in the dormitory. I define myself as a skealbma gánda - «a rascal». I soon got into trouble when I started school. There is no saying to wether it was the school and the dormitory which were not adapted to me, or I who did not adapt to the school and the dormitory. ...

– I did not spend many years in school until I was expelled and sent home in the late autumn 1954. The school and the dormitory were not able to control me. I stayed at home for almost two months before anything happened from the school's side. Then two grown up men came to Bieskkenjárga. Their mission was to transport me and my mother to the village. They did not tell us why I was to be brought to the village. It was a terrible experience for a nine year old boy, who was handcuffed before they left home. And that was the last time I saw my home for several years.. ... I was to be transferred to a special school close to Moss. ...

Sverre Somby demonstrates how he was chained to a fence in Karasjok when he was a child. (Photo: Amund Johnskareng, Min Áigi)

– Varna school was virtually a school breeding scoundrels. Within the school and the dormitory the law of the jungle was prevailing. Violence, sadism and sexual abuse from both older pupils and employees was common. To tell anybody about what was happening was useless. It provoked punishment, and it was common to get beating from both pupils and employees. The methods of punishment that the employees made use of could be detestable, something I experienced many times. I was locked into a room in the basement several times. ....

– While I was in school I did not have much contact with my mum. There was no telephone at home, and the administration of the school did not see after that I and the other boys would able to stay in touch with our families. ...

Not until the summer 1959 did I return home for good. I had been away for three years by then. The result of my years in Varna boy's home was that I had lost my mother tongue, and was only able to speak Norwegian. It took almost half a year until I could speak proper Sami again.