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<h1>Greenland, Victim Of Denmark's Linguistic Colonialism</h1>
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Tiniteqilaaq, Greenland, Denmark - <a href="https://www.worldcrunch.com/world-affairs/www.zuma24.com" target="_blank"><span class="gmail-orange-desc">Patrick Pleul/ZUMA </span> </a>
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<a href="https://www.worldcrunch.com/world-affairs/greenland-victim-of-denmark39s-linguistic-colonialism#">Noa Agnete Metz
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<span class="gmail-date gmail-date-desktop" style="float:right"> 2017-04-27</span>
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<p> </p><p><strong>COPENHAGEN</strong> — In the
picturesque Danish capital, it's easy to overlook the men lying on
public benches with a beer in hand, or assume they're immigrants from
Southern Europe. Listen carefully, though, and you'll notice that they
speak fluent Danish, a task almost impossible for foreigners. These men,
it turns out, are Danish citizens; indigenous Inuit people from the
Danish territory of Greenland.</p>
<p>Inuit in Copenhagen mainly live among themselves and are marginalized
from broader Danish society, with its emphasis on gender equality and <a href="https://www.worldcrunch.com/business-finance/hard-questions-for-denmarks-soft-unemployment-cure" target="_blank">the welfare state</a>.
These men are from a culture very different from the one that surrounds
them. Danes even have an expression for it: being “drunk as a
Greenlander." The homeless Inuit who live on the streets of Danish
cities are a symbol of Denmark's failed colonial policy that, although
it never resorted to blatant violence, has been anything but successful.</p>
<p>Greenland has high levels of unemployment and <a href="https://www.worldcrunch.com/culture-society/child-suicide-french-study-takes-a-hard-look-at-a-heartbreaking-problem/c3s3858" target="_blank">suicide rates</a>;
life expectancy is 10 years lower than in mainland Denmark. The
enormous North American island has significant autonomy, but the Danish
central government provides 500,000 euros a year ($536,000) to Greenland
and manages its security, judicial system, and foreign policy. Most
jobs in Greenland that require training and education also require
applicants to speak Danish, making life difficult for locals who don’t
speak the language. Such a requirement also contributes to a greater
Danish presence on the island.</p>
<p>In 1952, the Danish government's Greenland Department went about
implementing a radical set of policies to "civilize" the Inuit and to
allow them to survive autonomously.</p>
<p>Eleonora is an Inuit woman in her 50s who lives in Nuuk, the capital
of Greenland. Under these policies, the state shipped her 4,000 km away
from her <a href="https://www.worldcrunch.com/smarter-cities-1/in-denmark-the-world039s-first-self-sufficient-green-island" target="_blank">family to Denmark</a> to study Danish. She was 13 years old at the time.</p>
<p><img alt="inuit greenland denmark" src="http://img4.hostingpics.net/pics/357714inuit2a.jpg" class="gmail-img-responsive gmail-img-on-hover"></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0px"><em class="gmail-img-description-article">Inuit wearing traditional dress in Greenland — Photo: <a href="http://zumapress.com/zpdtl.html?IMG=20090621_zaf_v61_009.jpg&CNT=81#">Dave Walsh/ZUMA</a></em></p>
<p>"We wanted to go and so did our parents. You have to understand that,
in those days, we aspired to become exactly like the Danes: tall,
beautiful, and efficient," she says. "<a href="https://www.worldcrunch.com/blog/hygge-the-curious-story-of-danish-happiness" target="_blank">Life was not too bad in Denmark</a>.
But it was difficult to be so far away from my siblings, and I was shy
when seeing my mother again a year later. After returning to Greenland I
never lived at home again, and we were placed in boarding schools with
other children who learned Danish, so we spoke little Inuit."</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>They don’t teach you how to hunt. They don’t tell you our stories.</em></p>
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<p>After attending university in Denmark, Eleonora returned home but
things were never the same. "When I went to see my family in the summers
during boarding school, often I couldn’t understand what they were
saying," she says. "We grew apart."</p>
<p><strong>Language politics</strong></p>
<p>The Danish government’s language policy was a key element in its plan
to "open up" Greenland to the outside world. In the 1950s, Copenhagen
also embarked on a radical experiment to create a Danish-educated Inuit
"elite" who could act as a bridge between Greenland’s population and the
Danish government. In 1951, the government selected 22 children between
the ages of 5 and 8 from Greenland — with varying degrees of consent
from their parents — and sent them to Denmark to learn Danish language
and culture.</p>
<p>The policy was a disaster and none of them went on to form an Inuit elite. Instead, they <a href="https://www.worldcrunch.com/culture-society/in-mexico-64-dialects-at-risk-of-extinction/language-linguistics-dialects-dialect-preservation-tabasco/c3s10991" target="_blank">forgot their mother tongue</a>
and their cultural and emotional attachment to the island. Half of the
children died in their youth, their lives destroyed by frequent moves
between orphanages and Danish foster homes. In 2015, the Red Cross,
which had participated in the policy, made a formal apology to the
children and their families. The Danish government, on the other hand,
has merely called the policy an "error."</p>
<p>In the 1960s, Copenhagen replaced the policy with one to two years of mandatory Danish <a href="https://www.worldcrunch.com/culture-society/quelle-horreur-outrage-at-plans-to-teach-french-university-courses-in-english" target="_blank">language courses</a>
in Denmark for Inuit children aged 8 and above. This program, which
Eleonora took part in, continued in different forms until the 1990s.</p>
<p><img alt="denmark greenland landscape ice worldcrunch" src="http://img4.hostingpics.net/pics/85092620120717zafd20567.jpg" class="gmail-img-responsive gmail-img-on-hover"></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0px"><em class="gmail-img-description-article">In Tiniteqilaaq, Greenland — Photo: <a href="http://www.zuma24.com" target="_blank">Patrick Pleul/DPA/ZUMA</a></em></p>
<p dir="ltr">"The problem is that when you don’t see your loved ones
often, you lose your sense of family. I learned Inuit again while
studying Inuitology at university in Copenhagen," says Eleonora. "My
generation lost some of its identity because when you live with other
children in boarding school you lose your roots. They don’t teach you
how to hunt. They don’t tell you our stories."</p>
<p dir="ltr">Denmark’s language policies caused a rupture in Greenland’s cultural fabric and generated <a href="https://www.worldcrunch.com/world-affairs/in-real-life-venezuela-is-a-ticking-time-bomb" target="_blank">a social crisis</a>
that continues to this day. Today, children are no longer shipped to
the mainland, but the island’s pressing issues remain unresolved.</p>
<p dir="ltr">For Eleonora, the new policies aren’t much better than the
old ones. "Young people now speak Inuit well but traditional Inuit life
barely exists anymore," she says. "And if they can’t speak Danish well,
how are they going to find a job in Greenland?"</p>
Just like their <a href="https://www.worldcrunch.com/culture-society/where-grandma-needs-a-permit-to-have-the-grandkids-stay-over/c3s5375" target="_blank">parents and grandparents</a> 60 years ago, people in Greenland today must still learn their former colonizer's tongue to succeed at home<br><br><a href="https://www.worldcrunch.com/world-affairs/greenland-victim-of-denmark39s-linguistic-colonialism">https://www.worldcrunch.com/world-affairs/greenland-victim-of-denmark39s-linguistic-colonialism</a><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">**************************************<br>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members<br>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message. A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)<br><br>For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to <a href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/" target="_blank">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/</a><br>listinfo/lgpolicy-list<br>*******************************************</div>
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