Greenlanders Blast Danish Rule: 'They Stole Our Future'

For some time now, we've been watching the back-and-forth over Greenland. The United States, Denmark, and the nations of NATO have been at odds since President Trump took office a year ago. However, the United States has attempted to acquire Greenland on multiple occasions over the years, and with good reason; Greenland not only occupies a strategic location in the North Atlantic, it also has energy and mineral resources that the United States needs.

Denmark is adamant that Greenland will remain a Danish possession. Greenland's political leadership also insists on this status quo.

But Greenland's native population may have other ideas.

Native Greenlander Amarok Petersen was 27 years old when she learned the gut-wrenching truth about why she couldn’t have children — and that Denmark was to blame.
Suffering from severe uterine problems, a medical doctor discovered an IUD birth control device in her body that she didn’t know she had.
Danish doctors had implanted it when she was just 13 as part of a population control program for thousands of native Greenlandic girls and women.
“I will never have children,” Petersen told The Post, with tears of anger and sorrow welling in her eyes. “That choice was taken from me.”

Amarok Petersen isn't the only Greenlander to have reason to be unhappy with Danish rule.

Even in adulthood, medical decisions were made without Petersen’s consent. Plagued with problems after the IUD, she had repeated surgeries for unexplained pain. It wasn’t until years later that doctors informed her that her fallopian tubes had been removed in one of the operations in the early 2000s.
Her family also suffered under Denmark’s so-called “Little Danes experiment,” in which Greenlandic children were forcibly sent to Denmark for adoption or institutional care — often permanently separated from their families, she said.
The program, which ran from the 1950s through the 1970s, was part of Denmark’s broader effort to assimilate Greenlandic children, often without parental consent.

Granted, the United States hasn't always had the best track record for dealing with the native population.

Murkowski Slams Trump's Acquisition Bid: Greenland Is an Ally, Not an Asset

This shouldn't be taken as a sign that Greenland natives are anxious to come over to the United States. Denmark is trying to make amends to the natives who were thusly mistreated, to the tune of roughly $46,000 each in reparations. That's just; unlike the calls for reparations in the United States, these payments are being made to the living people who suffered under an unjust policy, which is quite a different kettle of fish.

Many Greenland natives would rather the island be an independent nation. But that's not a tenable solution, especially in today's tense geopolitical atmosphere, where the Arctic is increasingly a vital strategic area, with all the major nations - the United States, Russia, and China in particular - looking to that region's resources. Greenland has to be under someone's defensive envelope, and even as a Danish possession, they fall under the protection of NATO, as it would as a possession of the United States.

Denmark wants to retain the status quo. But many natives aren't happy with that status quo. Amarok Petersen notes:

The island has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, according to researchers, with an estimated 81 per 100,000 people annually killing themselves.
“They took our resources. They took our bodies. And then they told us to thank them,” she said of Danes. “How do you thank someone who stole your future?”

Maybe the native Greenlanders aren't happy under Denmark, and aren't particularly interested in the United States, either, but this is a constituency that the United States should at least be talking to. It is their future, more than anyone else's, that's under discussion here.

Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.

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