Verbing meahcci: Living Sámi lands

Abstract

This article is about translating and mistranslating a Sámi landscape word. That word is meahcci. In what follows we start by exploring the logic of meahcci, contrast this with Norwegian land practices, with utmark – the term which is usually used to (mis)translate it into Norwegian – or such English-language terms as wilderness. We show that meahcci has nothing to do with agricultural logics, ideas of the wild, or cartographic spaces. Rather meahcit (in the plural) are practical places, uncertain but productive social relations with lively and morally sensible human and non-human beings in which there is no division between nature (Norwegian natur) and culture ( kultur). Meahcit are taskscapes (Ingold) or places–times–tasks. Then we consider the relatively verb- or action-oriented character of the (North) Sámi language, and show that Sámi land practices and the patterns of words weaving through these enact contextual, processual and radically relational versions of space, time, interaction, subjectivities, objectivities, and the beings that live in the world. We also touch on the material character of this difference – the location of words and forms of knowing. We conclude by reflecting on what Sámi meahcci practices suggest for a hegemonic English-language social science that is also struggling to articulate situated and radically relational ways of knowing.

An Ecocultural Consideration of Sámi Early Childhood Education

“…This corresponds to the results of previous studies (e.g. Balto 1997;Jannok Nutti & Joks 2018;Joks 2007;Joks, Østmo & Law 2020;Laiti 2018), which have found that the relationship with nature is at the centre of the Sámi culture. The participants considered it important to speak to the children about the relationship between culture and nature.…”

Beyond transparency: more‐than‐human insights into the emergence of young children's language

“…In this sense, the vignette offers an example of Abram's (1996) argument that language frequently attunes with landscape. This argument is paralleled (and predated) by numerous Indigenous scholars, who have described the close relationship between language and place in diverse non‐western ontologies, in which, for example, language is learned from the land (Rasmussen and Akulukjuk, 2009), and ways of knowing are not abstract‐able from place (Joks et al, 2020; Tuck and McKenzie, 2015). Abram argues that, because of this close connection to place, learning language is best conceptualised as a bodily act.…”

“…Young children and educators need both time and space to embrace and value divergent language practices rather than straight line development that prioritises moving into and using dominant language to express transparent meanings as quickly as possible. Children's acquisition of more literacy practices earlier is a not a neutral common‐sense goal but a political position in which “different versions of what it is to know” are enacted (Joks et al, 2020, p.310). Those who work most closely with young children – parents, carers and educators – are, together with children themselves, experts on the possibilities, complexity and contingent meanings bound up in and emerging from young children's oracy.…”

Reindeer Husbandry and Global Environmental Change

“…This is more than mere semantics. Acts of labelling and translating both impose and disguise meaning in more or less visible ways but with tangible consequences (Joks et al 2020). Naming and classifying should therefore be scrutinized critically as they are neither innocent nor neutral actions but part of negotiating meaning and thus acts constitutive, impacting how sociopolitical governance is constructed and performed (Arts & Buizer 2009).…”