The Inuit of Greenland: A Brief History

From ‘Akwesasne Notes’, Early Autumn, 1975

(This analysis is by Malik, an Inut who came from Greenland to travel around the Iroquois Confederacy to learn about the meaning of sovereignty and to establish links with the people here. He and his companion, Iisaaq stayed at Ganienkeh to learn more about the Great Law of Peace and at AKWESASNE NOTES, where this essay was written. They planned to return home from Canada by dogsled across polar ice.)

In 1721, a Norwegian priest, Hans Egede, went to Greenland to preach Christianity to the Norsemen, descendants of Erik the Red, that his history books told him he would find there. But the Norsemen had died out centuries before, and Egede decided to stay on to convert the Inuit who are native to that land.

He was told to leave, but this strange qallunaaq, white man, settled down and the Dark Ages for the Inuit culture began.

Egede’s journey was blessed and financed by the King of Denmark as well as merchants, and Egede established a colony for them at Nuuk or Godthab, the Denmark’s colonial capital town still today.

The colonizers carried disease from Europe, and many Inuit died in those first years. No one really knows how many — perhaps 34,000 of the 40,000 residents perished. Egede converted the survivors and Greenland is still a Lutheran stronghold.

Before Egede’s arrival, the Inuit lived in cooperative settlements all over the coast. Many families shared big houses. The colonizers traded useless things for skin and fat and before long, the Inuit lacked the materials for clothes, tents, houses, boats and kayaks, and their dependency on the Danes increased.

As the Inuit became Lutherans, nobody was allowed to sing songs or carry on traditions considered ”works of the Devil.” Big houses were split and divided into individual family units, eliminating the working societies necessary for whalehunting. Also lost were the angakkoqs, medicinemen, and the songs and legends of the Inuit People.

The Inuit in Greenland gradually became mere workers for the colonists, who shipped seal fat, skin and bards to European factories. In return they received manufactured products, an exchange guaranteed to leave them at the bottom of the growing European capitalistic society.

Europeans took over the whalings and whale factories grew up on the coast. As the prices of sealskin in Europe increased, seals were killed, especially in their breeding grounds in Newfoundland, almost cleaning out the species.

The arrangement the King of Denmark had with other sovereigns was for an exclusive trading monopoly with Greenlanders. The Inuit had to sell to Denmark, and it was only from Denmark that they could buy those things they had become dependent upon.

As the Inuit lost their traditional ways, their children were taught European methods of living which are not appropriate to the land. For instance, the traditional stone and dirt houses were no longer built, and instead, frame houses were constructed — and since Greenland has no timber, Inuit had to import those items from Denmark. Leather clothing gave way to cotton cloth, oil lamps were exchanged for kerosene stoves, etc. It was a new market for both trader and missionary.

Instead of truly developing the economy of Greenland, the foundation was laid for a system of exploitation of raw materials. The means of production remained in Europe, and the only development was on transport and communication necessary for removal of resources to “the mothercountry.” Colonies were established in locations where there was open water the year around to facilitate shipping — even though such places are not necessarily the best places to live.

In 1908, two Landcouncils — one in the North and one in the South — were established, theoretically to handle internal affairs, but actually a bridge from mother Denmark to suppress and exploit the Inuit through their own people, members elected for four years.

When World War II broke out, Greenland came under the “protection” of the USA, which constructed military airbases in south, west, and north Greenland. In return for the “protection,” the US got cryolite, a resource vital to the military industry.

In 1960, the policy changed and the decision was made to “develop” the Inuit for civilization and to prepare them to enter the great wide world. In 1953, the Danish people voted that Greenland should be a part of Denmark rather than a colony. Although the Inuit were never asked, the Landcouncils, which had become rural aristocratic agencies alienated from their own people, voted to unite into one council. Greenland’s merger with Denmark was then recognized by the United Nations.

While this may have been the end of classic colonialism there, it was the beginning of neo-colonialism and Danish cultural imperialism. The goal envisioned in changing the legislature in 1950 was to establish Greenland as a carbon-copy of the Danish way of life.

Towns were invaded by modern-day Egedes, Danes who came to “civilize and build up poor Greenland.” With the cooperation of the Landcouncil, new industrial plans were devised, which will require engineers and workers from Denmark to achieve.

Greenland is still being exploited as a market for the capitalistic society. Inuit children are taught in a Danish school system by Danish teachers teaching Danish language and Danish culture. The Landcouncil created a new salary system in which the Inuit are paid only half of the salaries paid to white people.

Most of the Danish workers stay only a season and are mostly men. They make a lot of social problems in the towns as they stay in barracks and drink a lot. Danish stores and supermarkets sell mostly unnecessary things, products from Danish industry. Everything should be Danish, it seems — even the Inuit.

The result is a demoralized, deprived, discriminated against run over people. Because of the concentration of the Inuit to man fish factories, there is the sickness of the capitalistic system: great unemployment to keep the workers sharp. People are moved to the towns faster than the expansion of the apartment buildings. There is a lot of drinking and crime and the usual social problems as families are split, the young sent away for Danish education, and the old ones placed in old-age homes. Drink, drugs and suicide are common outs.

In the Davis Strait and in the fiords inside the coast, a lot of cod have moved in since the 1920s. That should be good for the fishermen, but traditionally, the Inuit there are hunters, not fishermen. Moving into large-scale commercial fishing is not done overnight, and in the meantime, fishing fleets from the same nations that killed off the whales and the seals are fishing out the cod. These nations bring whole fishing factories on their ships and stay out for many months.

Instead of developing an economy around these resources, Denmark brought Greenland into the European Common Market although the Greenlanders voted against it 74%. Now investments have been made in big harbors to exploit uranium, zinc, oil and iron. The Ministry of Greenland, the Danish Government, and, of course, the Landcouncil, opened the doors for multinational corporations to search for oil on the fishbanks near the coast. That would not only mean exploitation of resources, but the importation of tens of thousands of foreign workers. Right now, the Inuit population is about 41,000 and there are about 10,000 Danes living on Greenland.

In Greenland too there is talk of “self-determination”. This will mean the moving of offices from Copenhagen to Greenland, but this will give Greenland only more offices, not independence.

The national paper and the radio are talking about culture, a Greenlandic culture, and the new nationalistic movements are talking about more equality and non-discrimination.

But nobody much is talking about independence — except some young Inuit Greenlanders, who belong to the “Young Greenlanders Council”. The organization was born in Copenhagen among the thousands of youth sent to Denmark for education. When they return home, they are certain to create a new ideology and new eyes to examine the relations between Denmark and its colony, Greenland — or Kalaallit Nunaat, the Land of the Human Beings, as the Inuit call it.

These youths are seeking out Inuit who live the traditional way, the hunters, as the key to the identity which they must establish in themselves, the same identity their grandfathers had, instead of that of Denmark.