Abstract

This paper focus attention on the specific learning issues that face Indigenous population by exploring the experience of Sámi children in Northern Sweden and Aboriginal children in Central Australia. More specific is the overall aim to explore how Sámi and Aboriginal children’s experiences significant places for learning both in school and in their leisure time. The children’s experiences are made apparent with the aid of creative activity in the form of the production of drawings, combined with subsequent oral comments. The children who were included in the study attend schools for Sámi children in Jokkmokk in the north of Sweden and for Aboriginal children in Alice Springs in the centre of Australia, and were all aged between nine and twelve years. Theoretically the study is based on the life-world phenomenology. The analysis of the empirical material, the drawings, resulted in two themes – ‘Nature as a mediator for learning’ and ‘Mainstream society as a mediator for learning’. The result shows that there are many similarities between the children’s significant places for learning and that both the indigenous culture and the culture of the mainstream society are regarded as significant by the children.