< FNH Faculty
RAUNA KUOKKANEN
Sami professor Rauna Kuokkanen is the Aboriginal Studies program newest addition. An Assistant Professor with a cross appointment between Aboriginal Studies and Political Science, Kuokkanen calls Turtle Island her intellectual home.
Kuokkanen is far from Samiland, her home, which rests across the borders of Finland, Norway, Scandinavia and Russia. (The Sami are the Indigenous people of Northern Europe.) Growing up on the Finnish side of the Deatnu River, which translates to “the mother of all rivers,” on the border of Finland and Norway, Kuokkanen watched the salmon of the Deatnu support her seven hundred person community and her relatives across the body of water on the Norwegian side.
“Salmon is our sustenance, they bring people together and are the driving force of the community,” says Kuokkanen. What she learned from salmon she is now applying to her teaching. “Indigenizing and decolonizing the academy are close to my heart,” says Kuokkanen, author of Reshaping the University: Responsibility, Indigenous Epistemes and the Logic of the Gift (UBCP 2007).
Raised by her mother, who is a well established Sami writer and her father, a political activist, she credits her parents for where she is today. “My parents instilled the spirit of fighting injustice,” says Kuokkanen.
Rauna wants to knock down what she believes is one of the main challenges to Indigenous students: “The ignorance and arrogance of the academy. The academy claims to be a place of knowledge, but there is a lack of recognition of the existence of Indigenous worldviews and philosophies as a different foundation of knowing and being in the world.” She insists the academy must do its homework and learn from the indigenous philosophies of the gift. The gift can offer the academy a new path for relationships and sharing also at the level of knowledge.
Even tackling these huge imposing barriers, Rauna does not place the responsibility solely on the education system. “Indigenous scholars and educators also have to engage in this process, for example by building new Indigenous institutions, Indigenizing current institutions, and making sure that education is responsive to community needs as well as being driven by the community.”
Kuokkanen’s scope is a global one. Not forgetting her home community, she regularly writes for Sami publications, continually makes connections between Samiland and Turtle Island, and recently helped stop the desecration of a sacred Sami spring that was almost turned into a water bottling plant. As a speaker of the Sami language, she is currently finishing a book on Indigenous knowledge and philosophies in Sami.
Just as the salmon of the Deatnu River bring Sami communities on both sides of the river together and keep the people alive, Kuokkanen is bringing a fresh, new, Sami approach to the University of Toronto, linking the cultures of the peoples of Samiland and Turtle Island both in their related struggles, and their journeys towards finding solutions.
Jorge Vallejos
RAUNA KUOKKANEN
Sami professor Rauna Kuokkanen is the Aboriginal Studies program newest addition. An Assistant Professor with a cross appointment between Aboriginal Studies and Political Science, Kuokkanen calls Turtle Island her intellectual home.
Kuokkanen is far from Samiland, her home, which rests across the borders of Finland, Norway, Scandinavia and Russia. (The Sami are the Indigenous people of Northern Europe.) Growing up on the Finnish side of the Deatnu River, which translates to “the mother of all rivers,” on the border of Finland and Norway, Kuokkanen watched the salmon of the Deatnu support her seven hundred person community and her relatives across the body of water on the Norwegian side.
“Salmon is our sustenance, they bring people together and are the driving force of the community,” says Kuokkanen. What she learned from salmon she is now applying to her teaching. “Indigenizing and decolonizing the academy are close to my heart,” says Kuokkanen, author of Reshaping the University: Responsibility, Indigenous Epistemes and the Logic of the Gift (UBCP 2007).
Raised by her mother, who is a well established Sami writer and her father, a political activist, she credits her parents for where she is today. “My parents instilled the spirit of fighting injustice,” says Kuokkanen.
Rauna wants to knock down what she believes is one of the main challenges to Indigenous students: “The ignorance and arrogance of the academy. The academy claims to be a place of knowledge, but there is a lack of recognition of the existence of Indigenous worldviews and philosophies as a different foundation of knowing and being in the world.” She insists the academy must do its homework and learn from the indigenous philosophies of the gift. The gift can offer the academy a new path for relationships and sharing also at the level of knowledge.
Even tackling these huge imposing barriers, Rauna does not place the responsibility solely on the education system. “Indigenous scholars and educators also have to engage in this process, for example by building new Indigenous institutions, Indigenizing current institutions, and making sure that education is responsive to community needs as well as being driven by the community.”
Kuokkanen’s scope is a global one. Not forgetting her home community, she regularly writes for Sami publications, continually makes connections between Samiland and Turtle Island, and recently helped stop the desecration of a sacred Sami spring that was almost turned into a water bottling plant. As a speaker of the Sami language, she is currently finishing a book on Indigenous knowledge and philosophies in Sami.
Just as the salmon of the Deatnu River bring Sami communities on both sides of the river together and keep the people alive, Kuokkanen is bringing a fresh, new, Sami approach to the University of Toronto, linking the cultures of the peoples of Samiland and Turtle Island both in their related struggles, and their journeys towards finding solutions.
Jorge Vallejos
