| Abstract: | The Sámi are an indigenous people of the Arctic, and through a resolution of the United Nations, Norway is bound to take care
of the Sámi culture and language. Since 1987 the Sámi have had their own curriculum, but they have no mathematics syllabus.
In this paper we summarize the legal acts that take care of the Sámi culture within the Norwegian educational system, and
then discuss three examples of Sámi mathematics, which can be part of a possible Sámi mathematics syllabus. First, a unit
of measurement is presented, second, a unique way of treating the ratios 2:1 and 1:2 is described, and finally the use of
some Sámi versus Norwegian geometry terms are exposed. The three examples are situated in relation to the Yup’ik Eskimo Mathematics
in a Cultural Context (MCC), as described by Lipka, Webster, and Yanez (2005) and their contribution in this special issue of Interchange. |
