Multimodal Literacy Practices in the Indigenous Sámi Classroom: Children Navigating in a Complex Multilingual Setting

Abstract

This article explores multimodal literacy practices in a transforming multilingual context of an indigenous and endangered Sámi language classroom. Looking at literacy practices as embedded in a complex and shifting terrain of language ideologies, language norms, and individual experiences and attitudes, we examined how multilingual Sámi children navigate and appropriate meaning-making resources available for them while designing their own picture books. We adopted a discourse ethnographic approach to analyse these multimodal picture books and found three different but interrelated orientations to the making of the books, each organising and valuing multimodal resources in his or her own way. We conclude with a discussion of the value of repetition and creativity in multimodal literacy practices in a changing multilingual minority language context.