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The Inuit, who call Greenland home and live there, are getting little attention in the debate between U.S. president Donald Trump and Danish or European leaders over who owns the land.
Greenland is home to about 57,000 Inuit, spread over an area of 830,000 square kilometers (2.1 million sq miles).
Arctic Anthropologists working in an Arctic museum. We study a place called Kalaallit Nunaat or the land of Kalaallit by its inhabitants. Greenland is a nation of Indigenous peoples who have worked for many decades to claim their rights to self-determination.
Arrivals in the West
Northwestern Greenland, including what is now Pituffik Space Base of the U.S. Space Force, previously known as Thule Air Force Base, was for nearly 5,000-years the main entrance to the island. Indigenous peoples from Bering Strait moved to Siberia, Alaska and Canada, and then onwards into Greenland.
Around 1,000 years ago the Inuit of Greenland arrived with advanced technologies. These enabled them to survive in an Arctic environment that is dynamic and unpredictable, where even minor accidents can lead to serious problems. The Inuit hunted with the help of specialized tools and technologies, such as kayaks and dog-drawn dogsleds. They also used complex harpoons and goggles, made out of wood or bone, which had slits. The outfits they wore were made of animal fur and kept them dry, warm and comfortable in any weather.
The tools and clothes they wore were imbued in symbolic meanings, reflecting their worldview of interdependence between humans and animals. Inughuit people who still live in this region hunt and fish despite the changing climate.
In 2008, local people fishing from a boat near an iceberg that has an ice cavern, near Ilulissat.
Bryan Alexander, courtesy Peary MacMillan Arctic Museum at Bowdoin College. CC BY NC-ND
Arrivals in the East
According to an online exhibition at the Greenland National Museum, Erik the Red, who established Brattahlid in Qassiarsuk, south Greenland around the same time as Inuit began to arrive in the north in 986 and encouraged others to follow him in Iceland, founded the first Norse farming farm in this region. Many Norse families established their own farms and pastoral settlements in the area.
The Norse Farmers met the Inuit as they expanded to the south. Inuit and Norse exchanged, but the relations could be tense. Inuit oral history and Norse stories describe violent interactions. Both groups had distinct ways of living in the area that surrounds Greenland’s huge ice sheet. While the Norse were a very location-based people, Inuit hunters moved around island, bays, and fjords, depending on season.
The Norse could not adapt to changing climate conditions as the Little Ice Age began in the Northern Hemisphere in the early 14th century. By 1500, their colonies had all but disappeared. The mobile Inuit, on the other hand, adopted a flexible strategy and hunted land mammals and marine mammal according to availability. The Inuit continued to live in the area without major changes.
The center of activity
The statue commemorates Hans Egede’s arrival at Godthab, Greenland in 1721, to set up a Lutheran Mission.
As trade became increasingly important in 1776, the Danish Government established the Royal Greenland Trading Department. This trading monopoly administered communities along the west coast Greenland for 150 years as a colony.
In the early 19th century, some Kalaallit families living in Nuuk/Godthab formed an urban, educated class that included ministers, teachers, writers and artists, even though Danish colonists ruled.
In small coastal villages, Kalaallit communities engaged in economic and social traditions based on the respect for animals and sharing resources.
The colonization of the east coast, and the north was slower. This allowed explorers like American Robert Peary, and traders like Danish-Greenlandic Knud Raasmussen, to hire and trade with the locals.
In 1916, the U.S. officially recognized Denmark’s claim on the island when they purchased the Danish West Indies (now the U.S. Virgin Islands). In 1921, Denmark claimed sovereignty over all of Greenland. This claim was upheld by the Permanent Court of International Justice in 1933. Greenlanders weren’t consulted on these decisions.
In January 2026, protesters outside of the U.S. Consulate in Nuuk (Greenland) voiced their opposition to President Donald Trump’s claim on Greenland.
AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka
World Arrives
One of the benefits touted in a 1944 advertisement urging U.S. consumers to purchase shortwave radios is contact with Greenland’s people.
The Peary MacMillan Arctic Museum at Bowdoin College is CC BY NC-ND.
World War II opened Greenland to the world. The U.S. built bases both on the east and the west coasts of Greenland to protect the island, which was strategically significant. Although the U.S. tried to separate military personnel from Kalaallit, they were unsuccessful and there was some trading and visiting. The spread of radios and news broadcasts also helped Kalaallit to get a better sense of what was happening beyond their borders.
The Cold War saw more change, such as the relocation of 27 Inughuit Families living in Thule, near the new U.S. Air Force Base, to Qaanaaq where they were forced to live in tents, until wooden houses could be built.
Denmark revised its constitution in 1953. Greenland was changed from being a colony into one of Denmark’s counties. All Kalaallit citizens living on Greenland became full Danish citizens. Kalaallit elected their first representatives to the Danish Parliament.
Denmark increased its assimilation effort, and promoted the Danish culture, language, and language at the cost of Kalaallisut (the Greenlandic). The Danish authorities, among other things, sent Greenlandic kids to Danish residential schools.
In Nuuk, in the 1970s, there emerged a young generation of Kalaallit politicians, who were eager to promote and protect the Kalaallisut language and take greater control of Greenland affairs. Sume’s protest songs, sung in Kalaallisut by the rock band, helped to awaken Greenland.
Sume was a Greenlandic rock band that sang in Kalaallisut. This helped to galvanize the political self-determination movement in the 1970s.
A substantial majority in a Greenland referendum held in 1979 voted for “home rule”, within the Danish Kingdom. This meant that a Kalaallit parliament made up of representatives elected by the people of Greenland handled all internal matters, including education, social welfare and foreign affairs. Denmark retained control over mineral rights and other external affairs.
The push to achieve full independence continued. In 2009, self-government replaced home rule, which laid out a path towards independence, on the basis of negotiations after a possible future Greenlander referendum. Greenland can also assert its control and reap the benefits of it, while not managing foreign affairs.
Nuuk today is a vibrant and busy city. In smaller settlements where fishing and hunting are still part of everyday life, the pace is slower. Kalaallit, who live in Greenland today and have a variety of lifestyles to choose from, are united by their self-determination. Greenland’s leaders delivered their message to both the White House and the general public.
