By Mordecai Specktor
Trump threatens Kalaallit Nunaat
I checked The Circle website for references to “Greenland” and two article showed up.
There was a Sept. 2011 article about Thundercloud Radio, an Internet radio station that plays varied Native genres and “Native tracks from Hawaii to Greenland.”
The second article was the “Political Matters” column from Aug. 2021, about my travels to Denmark (where my son Max lives) and Poland. I mentioned that “there are Native people in Denmark: the Inuit of Greenland, which is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark. These indigenous people are Kalaallit, Inughuit or Tunumiit.”
The Greenlandic Inuit comprise close to 90 percent of Greenland’s small population. They call their land Kalaallit Nunaat.
The foregoing is included here because the lunatic currently occupying the Oval Office has threatened to seize Greenland and exploit its mineral wealth. (The same nefarious intent applies to copper-nickel deposits in Minnesota’s Arrowhead Region.)
Prior to taking office in January, Trump talked about annexing Greenland. The BBC reported that then president-elect Trump “reiterated his desire for the U.S. to acquire Greenland and the Panama Canal, calling both critical to American national security.
“Asked if he would rule out using military or economic force in order to take over the autonomous Danish territory or the Canal, he responded: ‘No, I can’t assure you on either of those two. But I can say this, we need them for economic security,’ he told reporters during a wide-ranging news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
“Both Denmark and Panama have rejected any suggestion that they would give up territory.”
Again, Trump has not ruled out seizing an Indigenous territory by using military force.
My son Max, who’s lived in Copenhagen for the past six years, has mentioned that Trump’s threats of territorial expansion have sent the Danes into a tizzy.
National Public Radio reported on Danish and European concerns in this regard. In early February, NPR reporter Rob Schmitz explained that “for decades, Denmark’s been a close ally of the U.S. People here feel a sense of loyalty to the U.S. for its role in World War II and fending off the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War. And in many ways, Denmark has stood by the U.S. by sending troops to U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over the years. There’s a partnership there that’s based on history, so for President Trump to threaten to take a territory from Denmark feels very out of place.”
To complicate matters further, Greenland will hold elections on March 11. All of the five parties competing in the elections support independence for the territory, with varied views on exactly when Greenland would sever ties with Denmark.
In early February, Reuters, reporting from Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, quoted a social media post by Prime Minister Mute Egede: “We are in the midst of a serious time. A time that we have never experienced in our country. This is not the time for internal division.” Egede’s post did not mention Trump.
Reuters noted that “a movement towards full independence from former colonial ruler Denmark has gathered momentum in recent years.
“Egede, who turns 38 on the day of the election, supports independence but has not proposed a plan to achieve this. He heads a government coalition of his own left-wing Inuit Ataqatigiit party and the social-democratic Siumut party.”
And Reuters reported two days later, on Feb. 6, that “Greenland’s ruling Siumut party plans to hold a vote on independence following [the March 11 election] … an issue made urgent by U.S. President Donald Trump’s expressed interest in acquiring the island.”
Greenland was a Danish colony until 1953, when it gained extensive self-governing rights.
“Siumut, a partner in Greenland’s two-party government coalition, plans to invoke an article in a 2009 law that granted Greenland increased autonomy, including the right to negotiate full independence, the party’s political spokesperson Doris Jensen told Reuters … She said Greenland needed to be independent from Denmark to be able to negotiate its future.”
Jensen told the news agency: “Until our country achieves the status of an independent state, our opportunities to officially participate in negotiations will be limited.”
And a recent public opinion poll found that 85 percent of Greenlanders are opposed to their country becoming a part of the U.S., according to Reuters.
“Invasion of Greenland” was not on my Trump 2.0 bingo card. But anything can happen these days under the MAGA regime in Washington. I’m writing on the day after Trump and J.D. Vance tag-teamed the Ukrainian president in the Oval Office, in a shocking display of belligerence intended to humiliate Volodymyr Zelensky, who has been leading his nation’s defense of Ukraine against bruta; Russian aggression, an invasion that started three years ago.
What could be next?
