Per Fokstad (3 September 1890 – 10 December 1973) was a teacher, politician, and intellectual of
Sami origin from Norway, and a pioneer in the fight for the use of the
Sami languages
Acronyms
* SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft
* Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company
* South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise net ...
in Norwegian schools.
Fokstad was born in
Deatnu-Tana,
Finnmark
Finnmark (; se, Finnmárku ; fkv, Finmarku; fi, Ruija ; russian: Финнмарк) was a county in the northern part of Norway, and it is scheduled to become a county again in 2024.
On 1 January 2020, Finnmark was merged with the neighbouri ...
. His parents were yard workers in
Bonakas
Bonakas () is a village in Deatnu-Tana Municipality in Troms og Finnmark county, Norway. The village lies on the western bank of the Tana River, just north of the village of Rustefjelbma.
Historically, Bonakas has been inhabited by the Sami pe ...
in Tana. The language used in the family's household was
Sami, and Per, who was the youngest of five, didn't know Norwegian when he began school. He started school as a 19-year-old at Tromsø's teacher college, and took his examination there in 1912. The same fall, he began as a teacher at ''Norskholmen skole'' in his home municipality of
Tana. In the following ten years, he would take a leave of absence for further studies, three of the times in countries other than Norway.
For the 1915-1916 school year, he studied at
Askov Folk High School
Askov is a city in Pine County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 364 at the 2010 census.
Minnesota State Highway 23 serves as a main route in the community, and Interstate 35 is nearby.
History
The village was originally within t ...
in
Denmark
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, song_type = National and royal anthem
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...
. In the fall of 1917, he studied the violin in Oslo. From 1919 to 1920, he studied at
Woodbrooke College
Woodbrooke Study Centre is a Quaker college in Selly Oak, Birmingham, England.
The only Quaker Study Centre in Europe, it was founded by George Cadbury in 1903 and occupies his former home on the Bristol Road. Woodbrooke's first Director of Stu ...
in
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...
,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
. The year after, he was at the ''Institut du pantheon de France'' in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
, where he first discovered
Henri Bergson
Henri-Louis Bergson (; 18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a French philosopherHenri Bergson. 2014. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 13 August 2014, from https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/61856/Henri-Bergson s philosophy.
Even in his first published article in 1917, he was fighting for
Sami language training in schools. At a conference in 1919 he was the architect behind a resolution that required:
# That the
Sami language should be studied for the first three school years.
# That all teaching about
Sami religion
Acronyms
* SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft
* Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company
* South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise net ...
should be done in the
Sami language.
# Introducing Norwegian as a foreign language.
He followed up the idea with an article in 1923, and with a detailed report on ''The parliamentarian school commission'' (1923–1926). In 1937, together with headmaster M. Bremer, a «cultural institute for the
Sami».
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fokstad, Per
1890 births
1973 deaths
People from Tana, Norway
Norwegian Sámi politicians
Norwegian schoolteachers
Norwegian Sámi people