The Sami people are a national minority in Sweden, but are also considered as native citizens of Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia. The world has however a very limited knowledge about the Sami’s and their cultural background.

The aim of this proposal is to examine six different history schoolbooks which depict the Sami people in Sweden. In addition, one of the key elements of this proposal is to understand how the selected literature represents the Sami people.

Lastly, the proposal also seeks to review if the literature in the schoolbooks represents the elementary curriculum goals (Lpo94).

The selected method was to do a text analysis of the literature and to illustrate that is presented in the reviewed schoolbooks. The text analysis is completed with an analysis of the illustrations and pictures that are presented in the selected schoolbooks.

The key findings were that the review in majority of schoolbooks has stereotypical descriptions of the Sami people. The Sami people are generally depicted with the hut and the reindeer management in majority of the reviewed schoolbooks.

The research about the Sami people is inappreciable in majority of the reviewed literature. In addition, the Sami people are often presented in connection with “other” history, such as the silver ore in the mines or the territory dispute with settlers from the south of Sweden.  

As a conclusion from the literature review, the Sami people are depicted as people with not much cultural history, static and none evolving.