Let’s take a look at what Greenland wants with Donald Trump. Upgrade to see the full report.
Nuuk, Greenland
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Snow is to Greenland what sand is to the Sahara Desert, but that may be an understatement.
New snowfall accumulates hourly in the island’s capital. The rugged mountains bordering Nuuk’s small port fade in and out of view, hidden by drifting blue and gray clouds.
Biting arctic winds chase the residents of Nuuk through the frigid streets.
Winter has been like this for as long as the people of this autonomous Danish territory can remember. Unite and prepare for whatever storm comes.
One day, high school teacher Simone Bagai stopped to talk to me about a new and different storm approaching. That is US President Donald Trump’s demand that Greenland be taken over either the “easy way” or the “hard way”.
“He has a complete lack of understanding of constitutional rights and moral integrity,” Bagai said.
It was generous to stand still in the cold. Speaking with ice spindrift stinging her feet and snow covering her head was a sign of how worried people here are about Trump’s rhetoric.
“Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders,” she said. “And they wanted the United States? Obviously not. They said it in a very polite way.”
I would hear the same thing over and over again – the resounding complaints as Greenlanders’ cultural civility was trampled upon by Trump.
“I don’t know what he wants to prove to us,” the teacher said. “There are no Chinese… there are no Russians.”
A short distance along an ice sheet disguised as pavement, I met Ludwig Petersen, a municipal engineer. Trump rattled him.
“I don’t like the idea of being part of America,” he told me. “My biggest concern is the privatization of health care and education. This is not what we are used to.”
Petersen believes a U.S. takeover will occur, as President Trump continues to insist that he will do something with Greenland, whether he likes it or not. “I’m afraid he’ll do that,” he said.
Still, like many here, he’s trying to untangle Trump’s logic. “It just doesn’t make any sense,” Petersen said. What about the half-dozen military bases that the United States has held in Greenland over the past few decades and still has rights to, he asked? “Why not open Greenland again and do what you need to do instead of occupying it?”
Leaning into adversity is part of life in Greenland. One of the many very friendly taxi drivers here, an Inuit like the majority of Greenlanders, told me about the difficult choices he faced.
Born in a small village in northern Greenland, he made a living by hunting seals and fishing, transporting his prey with a team of 38 dog sleds. Now, in this town a thousand miles to the south, he made a disappointing appearance in an old, low-horsepower, gas-guzzling taxi.
Climate change has cut him off from his cultural tradition of seal hunting, making his 38 dogs an unsustainable burden. The balance of life and nature that is core to almost everyone in Greenland has moved away from him.
He said he believes President Trump is unaware of all of this. “He’s stupid,” said the driver. “Trump thinks he’s a big guy, but we think he’s a little guy.”
To the irrelevant and redundant question I asked: Do you want America to occupy Greenland? – his answer was a clear “no”.
Mia Chemnitz, who runs a sealskin clothing business where she cuts and sews fur to make mittens, trousers and traditional Inuit smocks, wonders if the world really understands Greenlanders.
“When I talk about Greenland, I feel like I’m talking about society, about families, about the people who live here,” she told me. “And when the world talks about Greenland, it’s about land. It’s about resource areas. And it’s not the same. I feel like we’re not even talking about the same things.”
It’s a disconnect that is easy to see for outsiders. Countries, cultures, weather, sunlight patterns, the color of the night sky, the vastness of space, the scarcity of people, etc. It’s difficult to extract everything.
As we talked, I heard her talk about the difficulty of framing that disconnect and envisioning defense against superpowers.
“We’re friendly,” Kemnitz said. “We are a peaceful people. We have never fought a war… We don’t even have an army in Greenland. We don’t fight wars. So, of course, you know, we can’t resist the American military. No one can resist the American military.”
As she marked and cut seal fur to make traditional mittens, she said, ironically, that while she had wanted to do business with Americans, “now I might have second thoughts.” “Rather than bringing us together,[Trump]has just pushed us away,” she lamented.
Like the majority of Greenlanders (more than 85% in the latest poll last year), she is a “lifelong” supporter of independence from Denmark, but knows self-sufficiency will not be easy and allies are essential.
Colonization makes President Trump’s move to claim U.S. ownership even more troubling, as many Greenlanders define their relationship with Denmark as sometimes rocky. Chemnitz wonders at what price their current allies, the European Union and NATO, will support them.
“There’s a small, ugly, colonized voice in my head asking, ‘What do they want from us? At what point are we no longer worthy?'”
President Trump’s coldness here is polarizing, and people can feel it without going outside.
