[lg policy] Greenland, Victim Of Denmark's Linguistic Colonialism

Sat Apr 29 15:07:54 UTC 2017

 Greenland, Victim Of Denmark's Linguistic Colonialism
Tiniteqilaaq, Greenland, Denmark - Patrick Pleul/ZUMA
<https://www.worldcrunch.com/world-affairs/www.zuma24.com>

Noa Agnete Metz
<https://www.worldcrunch.com/world-affairs/greenland-victim-of-denmark39s-linguistic-colonialism#>
LA STAMPA <https://www.worldcrunch.com/listbypartner/12>
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English edition <https://www.worldcrunch.com/aboutus> • WORLDCRUNCH
<https://www.worldcrunch.com/aboutus> 2017-04-27

*COPENHAGEN* — 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.

Inuit in Copenhagen mainly live among themselves and are marginalized from
broader Danish society, with its emphasis on gender equality and the
welfare state
<https://www.worldcrunch.com/business-finance/hard-questions-for-denmarks-soft-unemployment-cure>.
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.

Greenland has high levels of unemployment and suicide rates
<https://www.worldcrunch.com/culture-society/child-suicide-french-study-takes-a-hard-look-at-a-heartbreaking-problem/c3s3858>;
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.

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.

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 family to Denmark
<https://www.worldcrunch.com/smarter-cities-1/in-denmark-the-world039s-first-self-sufficient-green-island>
to study Danish. She was 13 years old at the time.

[image: inuit greenland denmark]

*Inuit wearing traditional dress in Greenland — Photo: Dave Walsh/ZUMA
<http://zumapress.com/zpdtl.html?IMG=20090621_zaf_v61_009.jpg&CNT=81#>*

"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. "Life was not too bad in Denmark
<https://www.worldcrunch.com/blog/hygge-the-curious-story-of-danish-happiness>.
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."

*They don’t teach you how to hunt. They don’t tell you our stories.*

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."

*Language politics*

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.

The policy was a disaster and none of them went on to form an Inuit elite.
Instead, they forgot their mother tongue
<https://www.worldcrunch.com/culture-society/in-mexico-64-dialects-at-risk-of-extinction/language-linguistics-dialects-dialect-preservation-tabasco/c3s10991>
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."

In the 1960s, Copenhagen replaced the policy with one to two years of
mandatory Danish language courses
<https://www.worldcrunch.com/culture-society/quelle-horreur-outrage-at-plans-to-teach-french-university-courses-in-english>
in Denmark for Inuit children aged 8 and above. This program, which
Eleonora took part in, continued in different forms until the 1990s.

[image: denmark greenland landscape ice worldcrunch]

*In Tiniteqilaaq, Greenland — Photo: Patrick Pleul/DPA/ZUMA
<http://www.zuma24.com>*

"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."

Denmark’s language policies caused a rupture in Greenland’s cultural fabric
and generated a social crisis
<https://www.worldcrunch.com/world-affairs/in-real-life-venezuela-is-a-ticking-time-bomb>
that continues to this day. Today, children are no longer shipped to the
mainland, but the island’s pressing issues remain unresolved.

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?"
Just like their parents and grandparents
<https://www.worldcrunch.com/culture-society/where-grandma-needs-a-permit-to-have-the-grandkids-stay-over/c3s5375>
60 years ago, people in Greenland today must still learn their former
colonizer's tongue to succeed at home

https://www.worldcrunch.com/world-affairs/greenland-victim-of-denmark39s-linguistic-colonialism

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