Saami Affairs Committees and reports

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The Nordic states began to take measures to improve Saami affairs by appointing Saami Affairs Committees. In Norway in 1947 an organ for coodinating education called Samordningsnemnda for skoleverket was established. It had three members, one of whom was a teacher called Per Fokstad. A report was published a year later which contained an exhaustive review of Saami education from the days of Thomas von Westen in the early eighteenth century and proposed the creation of a new orthography for the Saami language and improvements in Saami school education. The report led to the production of the first Saami-language school book in the new orthography in 1951, and subsequently to the publication of the Catechism, a history of the Bible and a number of readers. In 1951 a state-run Domestic Science School for Saamis (Statens heimeyrkeskole for samer) was established inKautokeino, and the teaching of the Saami language began in the Tromsø Teacher Training College. In 1956 a new committee under Professor Asbjörn Nesheim was appointed to report on Saami issues. The report was published in 1959, and it initiated a large-scale debate about the principles of the authorities policy and aims concerning the Saami. The committee proposed that the state authorities should enhance the economic, social and cultural conditions of the Saami minority so as to preserve the Saamis way of life, occupations and language.

In Finland, a {{Kuvalinkki|I>) was appointed in 1949. It published a report in 1952, but the proposals did not lead to actual measures. The proposals of a report of the Norwegian Saami Committee in 1959 proved equally fruitless, which caused a stormy controversy. The basic aim of the reports was to bring an end to the assimilationist policy of the governments and to create some modest benefits for the Saami. At the beginning of the 1960s, the Norwegian Parliament held a comprehensive debate on the situation of the Saami for the first time, and it issued some statements about developing the teaching of the Saami language and its use in teaching other subjects.

In the 1970s there were several full and preliminary report on Saami affairs s. In Norway, the first report on the situation of the Saami (NOU 1975:37) dealt with further education and included proposals for drawing up a curriculum. In Finland, a Saami Committee was established by the Council of State (the cabinet) in 1971, and in its 1973 report (1973:46) it made a proposal for a Saami Bill. The draft bill included provisions concerning the definition of a Saami, a Saami Area, a [[Tiedosto:{{{1}}}|thumb|600px|{{{2}}}]]