Language as a cultural mediator in social work: Supporting Sámi culture with services in Sámi

Abstract

Language takes on heightened importance when working with a cultural and linguistic minority. The article examines welfare services and social work and their role in sustaining the language and culture of the Sámi in Finland as an indigenous people. The inquiry also analyses the current situation of and language use in the provision of services. The research contributes a theoretical discussion of linguistic codes in social work and of the importance of language use in promoting Sámi culture. It concludes that well-functioning services may offer indigenous people an opportunity and environment for using their mother tongue.

Keywords

Cultural sensitivity culturally conscious culture language linguistic codes services for Sámi

Introduction

Language is a bearer of culture. Social work, as a societal activity, science and field of learning – its entire theoretical knowledge base in fact – is constructed on meanings produced through language and concepts. Language fosters cohesion and identity within communities. Indeed, social work’s core function of helping is based essentially on linguistic interaction. In short, language defines social work on many levels. Gai Harrison (2006) has described social work as a particularly language-centred activity and Lena Dominelli (2004) has noted that language is both a practice and a tool for practice.

Language takes on heightened importance when working with a cultural and linguistic minority. It is also a key producer of differences and elements of power relations (Bishop, 2008). The danger is that the language of the dominant population too often becomes part of an assimilative policy and an instrument through which minorities are colonized. With many minority cultures and languages currently endangered, one would welcome more discussion in the field of social work that is geared toward analysing the social meanings of language (Harrison, 2006).

The cultural importance of language stood out prominently in our research on welfare services for the Sámi in Finland (Heikkilä et al., 2013). The implementation of services in clients’ native language is still far from what it should be, and although progress has been made in recent years, satisfaction with services among the Sámi population is lower than among the population of Finland at large.

Mere availability of services is not enough. Provision of services in the Sámi language bears on the survival of the language and the culture. Social and healthcare services are significant social arenas that can offer minority language domains where these can be used and opportunities for development. Social work, as a public service, bears its share of responsibility for realizing the fundamental rights of a population in a weak position. These include the right to one’s own language and culture.

It is surprising indeed that many analyses dealing with linguistic minorities, social work and the languages used in services have put forward solutions suggesting the use of bilingualism or interpretation (e.g. Chau and Yu, 2009; Engstrom et al., 2009; Khawaja et al., 2013). Comparatively little attention is paid to how integrally language is linked to culture and identity – despite the fact that there is no shortage of debate on the theoretical level on cultural sensitivity, cultural competence or culturally safe social work. Is the hegemony of dominant cultures and languages so overwhelming that it obscures the neocolonialism and imperialism – practices constructed through linguistic dominance – that are targeting indigenous and minority cultures (Bishop, 2008; Dominelli, 2004)?

The present article examines welfare services, social work in particular, analysing their relation to and responsibility for the survival of the language and culture of the Sámi as an indigenous people. I adhere to the critical and structural understanding of social work as well as to the requirements of cultural sensitivity. Drawing on data comprising a survey and interviews we conducted, I analyse briefly the current state of welfare services for the Sámi and the availability of Sámi-language services in the Sámi region of Finland (Heikkilä et al., 2013). The study raised a compelling question about the meaning of the language used in the services. The results challenged us to ponder more deeply over the significant role of language in services. Accordingly, the article undertakes a theoretical analysis of linguistic codes in social work and the importance of the language used in services for promoting Sámi culture.

The Sámi as a linguistic minority

The Sámi people live in the northern part of the Scandinavian countries – Finland, Norway and Sweden – and in a small area on the Kola Peninsula in Russia. Our research was carried out in the home region of Finland’s Sámi population, an area encompassing the country’s three northernmost municipalities. While extensive geographically, the region has a population of only somewhat over 10,000 persons. Of these, one-third (3500) are Sámi, who speak three different Sámi languages.

The survey questions on changes in language use revealed that a strong cycle of language shift is underway among the Sámi. Four out of five (80%) respondents stated that they spoke one of the three Sámi languages as their mother tongue (73% Northern Sámi). In contrast, only two out of five (40%) use Sámi any longer on a day-to-day basis. Originally, only 1 respondent in 10 (11%) was a native speaker of Finnish, but today a full 41 percent use Finnish on a daily basis. The proportion of those who use both Sámi and Finnish increased from 6 to 19 percent.

The use of the Sámi language has thus declined by half if we compare the number of people who originally spoke the language as their mother tongue and the number using it today. This trend signals a significant shift in the language and, by implication, in the culture as well. This also indicates that the Sámi’s linguistic rights have not been realized as envisaged.

The question of welfare services and the language used in service provision is linked to fundamental and social rights. The right of the Sámi people to their own language and culture is set out in the Finnish Constitution (The Constitution of Finland, 1999): ‘The Sami, as an indigenous people …, have the right to maintain and develop their own language and culture’. The Sámi Language Act (2003) seeks to ensure the linguistic and cultural rights of the Sámi set out in the Constitution. Under the Act, the Sámi have the right in their home region to use their own language before the public authorities.

The linguistic rights of the Sámi are also supported by the constitutional provision on equality and the Non-Discrimination Act (2004). Equality is defined as follows: ‘No one shall, without an acceptable reason, be treated differently from other persons on the ground of sex, age, origin, language, religion, conviction, opinion, health, disability or other reason that concerns his or her person’. The legal instruments do not necessarily guarantee services in one’s mother tongue; rather, services in Finnish with a Sámi interpreter available are considered sufficient. Moreover, the legislation has not been implemented by incorporating the principles in lower-level legal instruments. Only in day care and basic education do the Sámi have legislative guarantees of services and instructions in their own language.

The law regulating social work requires that the language and cultural background of a client be ‘taken into consideration’ (Act on the Status and Rights of Social Welfare Clients, 2000). Social work with Sámi clients has not been developed at the national level, however; the task has fallen to a small group of social workers in the Sámi region.

Data and methods

The aim of our empirical research (Heikkilä et al., 2013) was to obtain a comprehensive picture of the views of Sámi living in the different parts of the Sámi region on the availability of welfare services and of their degree of satisfaction with and need for those services. The study made use of both quantitative and qualitative methods. The data consisted of a survey examining the current state of and need for welfare services, as well as interviews providing complementary information on people’s perceptions of the state of services.

The questionnaire was translated into all three Sámi languages: Northern Sámi, Inari Sámi and Skolt Sámi. In all, we received 118 responses from the 412 households solicited. The complementary data comprised seven thematic interviews of key Sámi actors, who included managers in social and healthcare services in the region, members of associations, members of the Sámi Parliament and activists promoting public services for the Sámi. Our experience as researchers was that key actor interviews are salient and informative, whereas a questionnaire yields only a very narrow picture of what is a very complex phenomenon. This is the reason why the present article makes more use of the qualitative interviews.

The survey data were analysed by examining the distributions of the different variables, including a breakdown of these by language, and the themes of the interviews were specified using content analysis. The original analysis and results are presented in our previous research (Heikkilä et al., 2013); the present article interprets the results more as they illuminate the interconnection of the cultural context and language. The analysis put forward here also aims to illustrate on the theoretical level the relations between the cultural and linguistic dimensions of services. The key consideration in examining the data has been to interpret the results in the light of the cultural context, for special cultural and local elements in the course of history have shaped and differentiated the living conditions of the Sámi and their relation to welfare services. It is essential to analyse the cultural relevance of the services (Gray and Coates, 2010) from the point of view of the Sámi and understand the position and meanings of the services in their lives.

The fundamental question in social work is people coping in their daily lives and having a good life (Heikkilä et al., 2013) and the role of social services in making this possible. In the case of a special group, it is crucial that equality is observed when results are interpreted. Consideration must be given to the colonial legacy affecting the Sámi, their position as a minority and their relation to the dominant culture as institutional factors that figure in their daily lives. The relevance of any research is measured by whether it can improve services in support of the minority culture. In this article, I confine myself to addressing the importance of welfare services with a particular focus on their implications for the Sámi language and culture.

The research drew throughout on the Sámi’s knowledge of cultural practices and customs, with this given due consideration in the different stages of the study from design to interpretation of results (Casado et al., 2012). We were able to tap the cultural awareness of the members of our research team: one has a Sámi background and the other lives in the Sámi community.

Availability of services in the Sámi region

Centralized provision of services and a low population density are a difficult combination when trying to organize services for sparsely populated rural areas (Doxey and McNamara, 2015). In the Sámi region, welfare services are available in municipal centres and in a small number of ‘service villages’, in which there is still a shop, the lower six grades of a basic school and a healthcare nurse. The accessibility of services is hampered by long distances; the average distance our respondents had to travel to municipal services was 54 km, the longest 200 km. The distance to a central hospital can be 500 km and to a university hospital over 700 km. Accessing services requires having a car, and elderly people in particular require assistance with transportation. One complication for Sámi is that most of the taxi operators are Finnish speakers.

Our survey indicated that access to services is considered clearly more problematic in the Sámi region than in the country at large (see also Daerga et al., 2012). Of the Sámi respondents only one-third (38%) considered the availability of social and healthcare services to be at least rather good, whereas the corresponding proportion for Finland at large is nearly two-thirds (61%, Siltaniemi et al., 2011). Two-fifths (42%) of the Sámi surveyed assessed the availability of services as poor (nationally 16%). Only 1 in 10 considered availability as good if one applies the methodologically aware interpretation presented by Liisa Hokkanen (2012). She argues that the hesitation included in the option ‘rather good’ is not the same as ‘very good’, and, accordingly only an unreserved ‘very good’ can be accepted as meaning good availability:

How can you need services in Sámi, when they don’t even exist? (comment on the questionnaire)

The differences between and within municipalities are great. Some of the fundamental obstacles in the accessibility to services are distance to the services, how the municipality has organized its services, and the transportation available. One factor was the use of Sámi as an everyday language:

The problem is that there are too few people who need services and they live far apart. What this means is, can we ever produce services for everyone in their mother tongue? I was thinking about equality in services and the relationship of services in Finnish and in Sámi. But I don’t have a good enough imagination to find a solution to this problem. (Key actor interview)

The new forms of services that have been introduced do not as yet provide an alternative that would improve access to services. The Internet is used primarily for online banking. Online personal client services have developed very slowly in the social and healthcare services. Moreover, Sámi speakers find the increasing transition to telephone-based services difficult because using them successfully requires a good knowledge of Finnish.

The assessments that the availability of services was poor prompt a number of questions: How can we guarantee that equality is realized among people regardless of where they live, their livelihood, native language and culture? This situation poses a considerable challenge to social work: it should support culturally sensitive services for Sámi clients in the Sámi language and provide understandable information on services to avoid creating exclusionary contexts (Söderström, 2014).

The results of our survey indicate that few services are available in Sámi, although the situation has gradually been improving:

The situation of the Sámi differs from that of the Finnish population particularly in the area of the language of services. It is so limited, the knowledge of Sámi among those producing social services; it is downright depressing. (Key actor interview)

The best availability of services in Sámi is found in children’s language nests and language clubs and in day care. Associations have run independent projects developing culture-oriented services and services in people’s mother tongue. These have played a significant role in maintaining the language and culture, reinforcing a sense of community, promoting the position of the Sámi and developing new forms of services.

The current state of welfare services in the Sámi region, and the level of Sámi-language services in particular, do not provide sufficient support for maintaining the language and culture; Finnish, as the dominant language, is marginalizing the linguistic and cultural rights of the indigenous Sámi:

For the Finns, it goes without saying that all the services are provided in their language and are oriented towards their culture. But the Sámi always have to ask for them – and they still don’t get them. (Key actor interview)

Automatically, in a sense, language becomes an unchallenged norm and an instrument for producing governance (Dominelli, 2004), an assimilative practice leading towards monolingualism. Many of those who have done research on the position of linguistic minorities have demanded culturally appropriate (Engstrom et al., 2009; Khawaja et al., 2013) and linguistically competent (Guerrero et al., 2013) services in an effort to rectify the position of the minorities.

The meanings of language extend well beyond their traditional communicative function to their role in shaping socialization, identities, esteem and social capital, experiences of communality, and conceptions and knowledge of reality (Harrison, 2006). Different languages contain varied assumptions, beliefs and worldviews; they categorize reality in different ways. Lena Dominelli (2004) captures the importance of language in the statement ‘people live in and through language’. This challenges social work to analyse its position and responsibility in promoting language and culture and in bringing an end to colonization. To address these challenges, the article continues with theoretical reflection on the linguistic codes used in services and on the language of social work as a factor in promoting the culture of indigenous peoples.

Linguistic codes of welfare services

According to symbolic interactionism, meanings are created, reinforced, sustained and spread when using shared values and symbols (Blumer, 1998). Shared understandings are constructed based on culturally shared meanings, ways of acting and interpretations of the social order. Language is the most important system of signs in society and an understanding of it is crucial in all interpretations of everyday reality. Its meanings reflect collective historical and cultural experiences (Söderström, 2014). The Sámi language incorporates a symbolic code mirroring the people’s culture, customs and livelihoods and the context in which they live. For example, the language relating to the traditional livelihood, reindeer herding, contains over 500 words describing reindeer and a rich terminology exists for different forms of snow – an essential element of the environment in which herding is practised. Language thus embraces implicit, symbolic, cultural, socio-historical and contextual meanings.

Similarly, social work as a societal activity has a history and working environment of its own. The challenge is the way people, including minority groups with a different cultural background, live and work and how they interpret reality. Social workers operate on linguistic divides (Pomeroy and Nonaka, 2013). The language social workers acquire produces cultural practices and also shapes and limits their observations and interpretations. Language use is a social and political activity; it constructs power relations and determines how one understands reality (Harrison, 2006).

As Harrison (2006) describes it, language is always heteroglossic, for it consists of dialects, codes of social situations, ways of speaking and genres of speech. People use these selectively in different contexts, even where the prevailing standard is monolingualism. In interactions, a variety of linguistic codes come into play alongside the official spoken languages. The choice of code is not neutral, as language itself creates reality. The codes enable the creation of possibilities, value choices and distinctions as well as invisible, hidden power. Yet the languages used in social services are often thought to be neutral (Dominelli, 2004). Language has been seen as a one-dimensional, mechanical tool without recognizing the multilingualism that inheres in even a single language. However, the principal challenge for social work is to determine how it can translate the code of its professional language into the everyday language that clients understand (Engstrom et al., 2009).

In social work one can distinguish a range of linguistic codes (Figure 1) in addition to the everyday language that clients use: goal language of change-oriented work, official language, problem language, dialogic language and culturally sensitive language.

Figure 1.

Linguistic codes in social work.

Goal language in social work builds on a positive code, conception of humanity, and ethics that express an ideal goal of bringing about change. Language is typically rich in descriptive words, but it might be rather poor when it comes to spelling out actions that need to be taken. For example, the ideas of cultural sensitivity are widely accepted, but are not translated into practice very effectively (Chau and Yu, 2009).

The position of minorities and clients is often described on a general level in goal language, whose expressions reflect good intentions and ideological and cultural assumptions regarding the goals being pursued more so than reality. Goal language may romanticize and idealize the rich culture and special language of the Sámi, but the competence may not necessarily exist that could build culturally sensitive services and support the survival of Sámi culture.

In contrast, the language used to explain how minorities differ and to describe people as actual clients or target groups of services is typically problem language. This is often based on a negative code. It examines target groups using problem-related concepts, stigmatizes them and tends to slight resources and strengths. Problem language serves as a means to create differences. Its micro-power relegates ‘us’ and ‘others’ to different categories, with cultural differences becoming interpreted as foreign and strange. In services, workers content themselves with solving the problems of minority group members using models applied in the dominant culture. In such a context, Sámi social work is not seen as differing much, if at all, from general social work.

Official language is assumed to be the neutral and objective language of the government and the professions; it is used to formulate decisions and to organize and classify phenomena. The function of such a language is to create social order and regulation as well as to construct governmental rationality. Its code is formal and often alien to the language used in everyday affairs. Professional official language emphasizes the official role of the work; this may make it difficult for Sámi, with their experiences of colonization, to trust social workers (Boine, 2010).

The belief system of an official language embraces the idea that different groups within the population and among clients are equal and should receive equal treatment. The cultural and linguistic needs of a minority are acknowledged primarily by producing translations to provide information on services and by creating opportunities for interpretation on terms set by the dominant culture.

An alternative is dialogical language, which draws on an open code and makes a conscious attempt to understand diversity. It is a language that places itself on the same level as communication, interpretations and cultures that differ from it – perhaps even considerably – and is curious about diversity. Dialogicity supports exchange between groups; it facilitates shared interpretations and builds familiarity and cultural understanding.

Culturally sensitive language is the underpinning of culturally committed social work. It is based on understanding the social and historical context of different groups and their cultural characteristics (Saus, 2006). A minority language and the everyday language of a client are allowed to define social work. Being bound to situations, contexts and activities, this language helps to understand phenomena in terms of the circumstances, history and resources of different groups. The knowledge in social work is seen as cultural knowledge based on experiences in life and everyday living. The choice of language in social work sends a signal regarding the social worker’s view of a client’s citizenship and value.

Culturally sensitive language makes it possible to view things differently and to construct a new awareness. This entails trying to understand the social reality of all parties and to determine the purposes and meanings underlying language (Söderström, 2014). For example, the Sámi style of speaking involves expressing things indirectly and not speaking about problems, and this requires a different kind of listening and a joint interpretation of the subject matter (Heikkilä et al., 2013).

The meeting of languages and cultures in social work

When working with indigenous peoples, it is necessary to explore the relation between the understanding of a language and a cultural understanding and to clarify the multidimensionality of the concepts. At issue here is not merely language and its meanings, but rather a cultural knowledge of socio-historical, institutional and living environments. The traditional notion that language competence means being able to understand others’ language is inadequate; we must go beyond words to experiential and cultural meaning, from mere understanding to profound understanding.

Vidgis Stordahl (2007) shows how an understanding is based on different dimensions. Growing up in a particular culture gives one an experiential background which she calls ‘cultural competence’. It differs from the dimension based on analytical thinking and practice; this she calls ‘cultural understanding’, or the skills necessary to work analytically with the problems of other people. An indigenous person brings experiential understanding, but a social worker needs, in addition, analytical understanding to comprehend the relations between phenomena and grasp issues holistically. Linguistic considerations take on new dimensions when the starting point is profound cultural understanding rather than merely being able to understand a language. One can go beyond correct or incorrect understanding when one views services as products of history and context.

Adequate linguistic understanding is pursued through the idea of bilingualism (e.g. Engstrom et al., 2009; Khawaja et al., 2013). Having members of the indigenous population learn the dominant language has been part of the solution. One outcome of the assimilation of the Sámi in Finland is that most of them now speak Finnish. Yet the official language used in welfare services is foreign to them terminologically; moreover, it is not easy to deal with highly personal matters, those difficult to put in words, in a second language. Elderly Sámi in particular experience difficulties, as their knowledge of Finnish is often poor.

Efforts are made to address the responsibility for providing welfare services in two languages by training and hiring workers who know the minority language. However, in the case of almost all welfare services there is a shortage of qualified workers who speak Sámi (Heikkilä et al., 2013). The sparsely populated Sámi region, with 3500 Sámi inhabitants, does not have many social workers, and few of them have a Sámi background. However, the importance of the Sámi social workers extends beyond language skills, since, given their cultural understanding, they can better take into account clients’ cultural roots and develop new, culturally informed working methods:

We try to have a Sámi-speaking person in services in every part of the sparsely populated areas. But we can’t hire people all around the municipality who speak all three Sámi languages. (Key actor interview)

Efforts are made to build linguistic bridges in welfare services using interpretation as well. In practice the right of the Sámi to use their language before public authorities is realized primarily through interpretation, because there is a lack of services in the Sámi language. However, problems arise with quality because of the complexity of linguistic communication and the mastery of the expressions needed, as well as the role and suitability of the interpreter in dealing with sensitive matters (Chand, 2005). A solid command of the language is not enough; also needed is a sound knowledge of how the authorities work and of the minority culture. Language as a cultural factor is broader than mere communication. It also indicates a person’s membership in a cultural group and expresses his or her identity.

Anne MacFarlane et al. (2009) discuss how situations in which interpreters are used often lack something essential. They describe interpretation as involving ‘wicked’ problems due to the multidimensional character of communication and challenging nature of the situations. Our research indicates that Sámi clients feel uncomfortable using an interpreter because it is difficult to talk about sensitive personal matters through a third person. In a minority culture, people often know each other, their families and relatives, which prompts a fear that knowledge of their personal affairs may spread. They have a strong preference for having relatives or others whom they know well to act as interpreters (Heikkilä et al., 2013). In any event, things which are difficult to express, emotional experiences and nuances do not translate well. In interpretation it may be difficult to achieve cultural understanding; in practice, communication proceeds on the level of linguistic understanding, which only partially fulfils the aims of services. In such circumstances, a service does not meet the demands of cultural safety (on the concept, see Brascoupé and Waters, 2009).

There can be no cultural sensitivity without trust. Trust for its part is rooted in respect, which is often the product of long-term successful processes. The Sámi have experienced an intense history of colonization in which their rights were not respected. They have been Fennicized; their language and culture has become secondary to that of the dominant Finnish culture and made into exotic tourist products. Intensive land use has made it difficult for them to practise their traditional livelihoods. A history of colonization has eroded people’s trust in different aspects of their lives.

In the best case, trust can be built on an opportunity to use and be understood in one’s mother tongue, which provides a vocabulary for describing everyday experiences and the cultural sphere. One language cannot be exchanged for another, for expressions, meanings and nuances are often not readily translatable. The right to use the language of one’s culture and the language applied to the living environment produces cultural safety.

Cultural safety (Brascoupé and Waters, 2009) means that in using his or her mother tongue an indigenous person can become genuinely understood through personal meaning. One’s native tongue provides a language for expressing emotions, for which a foreign language is not necessarily well suited or a person’s command of the language is inadequate. The mother tongue is the language of the soul or the heart, as one Sámi described it. It is the language of one’s personal experiential history, values and relation to the environment and landscape in which one lives.

In culture-conscious social work these elements are combined. People’s personally difficult situations, family problems or mental strain are issues which require particularly sensitive encounters, demanding due attention to language and culture. Our research shows that the most acute shortcoming in the Sámi region is the lack of mental health services in Sámi, despite this being precisely the area where language plays a key role in processing and interpreting (Heikkilä et al., 2013). Work has only recently begun on developing culture-centred substance abuse services (Heikkilä, 2014).

Language and culture are inextricably intertwined in a person’s life-world (Bishop, 2008). Together they form the basis for our conception of reality and for our worldview. In this respect, they sustain a person’s entire interpretation horizon. It is on this foundation that culturally competent and sensitive services can be built.

The language of social work as a factor promoting culture

The importance of language is most often examined on the level of client work, in terms of the interaction between a social worker and his or her client. Where this is the approach, there is a danger that the role of language will be reduced to a means for handling one’s daily affairs. Attention is rarely paid to the cultural significance of language.

Working with a client and dealing with difficult situations in life, crises and relationships with family and close friends requires consideration of the client’s situation as a whole in the context. Being holistic and situation-bound, social work is always cultural in nature. Work with clients is based on interaction, whereby the dimensions of language establish the conditions under which the work takes place. Yet researchers have analysed interaction without closer consideration of the conditions language imposes on it.

The crucial role of language in social work seems to become an issue when attention turns to work with linguistic minorities, for example indigenous people, immigrants or refugees. These are contexts in which knowledge of the dominant language and the minority language figure prominently. However, language is also important in working within a single language area because of differences in terminology, communication and understanding, in cultural issues and sub-cultures or in writing documents and client files. One rarely sees analyses of language as the bearer of culture or of the historical and contextual meanings that language has. Social work needs reflection that deconstructs the relations between language and culture and provides a deeper-going, culturally sensitive scrutiny of language.

Such analysis is also needed in the area beyond work with clients. The structural function of social work is to improve services to better correspond to people’s needs (Mullaly, 2007). Social work may thus incorporate an element of support for language and culture more extensive than the services as such. It requires cultural awareness as well as a critical, novel and creative relation to the system of services. Well-functioning services offer indigenous persons not only social support, but also an opportunity and environment to use their mother tongue. Good examples of this are the language nests designed to revitalize the Sámi language, day care and school groups in Sámi, as well as daytime activities and home help for elderly persons. The services may be set a dual task in which they fulfil their function properly and offer new forums for using the language daily. Of particular importance are services which provide a low threshold for engaging in daily life and services in which people from different age groups have an opportunity to meet. Such services also furnish a platform for the story-telling that transmits the cultural heritage.

Discussion

The debate on indigenous peoples has seen a variety of concepts introduced to describe the creation of culturally aware opportunities. I now go on to sum up my theoretical reflections, drawing on relevant terms that regularly occur in the literature cited, particularly ‘culturally sensitive’, ‘culturally competent’ and ‘culturally safe’.

In the context of social work among the Sámi, language and culture are inseparable elements. The meanings of language in welfare services necessarily include consideration of the historical, social, cultural, institutional and contextual factors. Both language and culture are multidimensional. Cultural and linguistic powers are always distributed unequally in a multicultural society. Language also incorporates different realities. In addition to being an instrument, language is a platform or an environment. People live in language, as Dominelli (2004) has pointed out.

Culture and language are inextricably intertwined, which in the case of indigenous peoples presents social work with the challenge of approaching cultural heritage as its principal focus. This topic has been conceptualized in innumerable ways. In the literature cited here, the challenges facing social work are described using concepts such as culturally relevant (Gray, 2010), culturally appropriate (Khawaja et al., 2013), culturally sensitive (Brascoupé and Waters, 2009; Chau and Yu, 2009), culturally competent (Casado et al., 2012; Engstrom et al., 2009), culturally safe (Brascoupé and Waters, 2009) and culture-conscious (Pomeroy and Nonaka, 2013).

Similar terms are used to describe emphases relating to the language of social work: culturally sensitive communication (Söderström, 2014), linguistically sensitive (Harrison, 2006), linguistically competent (Guerrero et al., 2013; also culturally responsive) and linguistically appropriate services (Engstrom et al., 2009). Other relevant terms are those seen in the extensive indigenization debate (Gray, 2010; Gray and Coates, 2010; Yunong and Xiong, 2011), in which Mel Gray (2010) opts for the term ‘culturally relevant’. I have navigated through these concepts, which are closely related but have different emphases, and initially cast my anchor close to the understanding described as cultural sensitivity (Casado et al., 2012; Chau and Yu, 2009).

Conclusion

Analysing the importance of language in welfare services and the relations between language and culture required me to reflect on the concepts used. After examining the position of language and culture among the Sámi and how social work relates to this setting, I set out the elements of culturally conscious social work as depicted below (Figure 2). Language is presented as a part of culture, as a central factor supporting it.

Figure 2.

The elements of culturally conscious work.

The analysis of language and culture as the point of departure for social work is predicated on a culturally conscious, critical orientation. It is sensitive to local and global mechanisms of cultural influence, to historical and social courses of development, and to environmental contexts. In the interrelations of these factors, one can identify new mechanisms of power and colonization but also the power and distinctive features of culturality in people’s lives. A critical, conscious cultural orientation helps social workers to grasp the structure of the complexity and diversity in their work.

Culturally conscious social work is fundamentally culturally sensitive. It is based on an understanding of, respect for and trust in difference and people’s own values and orientations. The work is shaped on the basis of the needs defined by the indigenous persons. Sensitivity can be described as being both a cooperation-oriented and a learning relation as regards the meanings of language and culture.

Culturally conscious and sensitively oriented social work examines critically the cultural relevance of everything it does. The goal of such work is to support the language and culture of an indigenous people in keeping with the group’s own aims. Implementing culturality in the course of social work hinges on cultural competence: the analytical use of knowledge, respect and understanding, as well as the skill to work together. Where all of these cultural requirements are met, the outcome is cultural safety (Brascoupé and Waters, 2009), which provides a minority group with a guarantee that its language and culture are recognized and will survive, as well as deepens trust and underpins cooperation.

Understanding the Sámi’s culture and history plays a crucial part in ensuring a good life, in their welfare. Many historical levels live simultaneously in their reality, which is reflected in their need for services. Social work and welfare services are arenas where the dominant and the Sámi cultures meet and one sees the interplay of the groups’ respective rights. The issues are broader than services: support is needed for mental welfare, livelihoods, culture, identity, a sense of community and the survival of the language.

Today, equality is not realized where services in Sámi are concerned. This situation prompts the question of whether we can speak of structural discrimination, that is, hidden discrimination in legislation, services and working practices. If this is the case, society is not practising assimilation but it is forcing people in practice to become bilingual and to adopt a dual identity. The Sámi have been ‘equally silenced’ (Lehtola, 2012).

Service situations are part of the everyday use of language. The challenge for social work is to develop services such that they offer a wide range of environments in which to use the Sámi language, allowing it to remain vital and to thrive. Services in Sámi are valuable in creating new environments where the language can be used. In this respect, services have a dual role: their impact on welfare expands to include the provision of support for the Sámi language, culture, and identity. At its best, a culturally conscious orientation in social work promotes the resilience and empowerment of indigenous people and advocacy of their rights.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author biography

Anneli Pohjola is Professor of Social Work at the University of Lapland in Finland and Coordinator of Sosnet - Finnish National University Network for Social Work. Her main research areas are the development of welfare services, especially for minorities and in sparsely populated rural areas, the clients’ position in welfare services, social work education.

References

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