My Adventures in Greenland |
These days, most people know Greenland the way the U.S. president knows it: a strategically located asset that the United States wants to own for national security purposes. The media are describing it as a mineral-rich, ice-covered Arctic island. Others see it as a frontier to cash in on: new shipping routes opening up due to melting ice, opportunities for oil and gas, and the mining of the world’s largest untapped reserve of rare-earth elements. Only in the European leaders’ joint statement in support of Greenland did we hear about the people who live there: “Greenland belongs to its people. It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.”
Much of the international coverage has flattened an autonomous territory of 56,000 people—with a rich history and incredible culture and traditions—into a conveniently located piece of rock. This makes it easier to imagine it as real estate to be bought, territory to be invaded and a bargaining chip between the world’s big powers. But Greenland is not its coastline or minerals. It is its people—and they’re people I know.
In the summer of 2010, I was a bright-eyed, 20-year-old international development student at the University of Guelph, venturing to Greenland to research my honours thesis on climate change and its effects. Most tourists start in West Greenland, home to the capital, Nuuk, but I landed in Kulusuk Airport on the east side of the island. After sea kayaking for a week in Tasiilaq, a town of about 3,000 people, I travelled by boat to Sermiligaaq, a village tucked deep inside the Sermiligaaq Fjord on Greenland’s east coast. With a population of just over 200, it’s one of the most remote permanently inhabited settlements in Greenland.
I lived there with a local family for a week. My host mother, Charlotte, welcomed me to her beautiful turquoise house, the same colour as the water, and I met her five-year-old daughter, Ebba, who would........