A Greenlandic government minister has said she views Donald Trump’s interest in the territory as positive, saying it has acted as a “wake-up call to Copenhagen” after years of failing to adequately respond to its demands for action on minerals and alleged abuses by the Danish state.
Naaja Nathanielsen, Greenland’s minister for housing, infrastructure, minerals, justice and gender equality, said the government had been trying to drum up interest in collaboration with both the EU and the US for “many years”, but it was only now that it was getting the attention it had been seeking.
Her comments came after the prime minister, Múte Egede, on Monday said Greenland had started a dialogue with the US and was seeking to cooperate with the Trump administration. He said his country was open to closer ties with the US and had its “doors open in terms of mining”.
Egede did not, however, say he would be open to a US takeover of the autonomous territory after the US president-elect raised alarm bells last week when he refused to rule out military intervention to gain control of Greenland.
Nathanielsen told the Guardian: “We have been trying to get more involvement from both the EU and the United States for many years now, so I think this is to some extent, I would say with some hesitance, the kind of attention we have been seeking.”
Usually, she said, the Danish media showed little interest in speaking to her about either minerals or the forced contraceptive scandal, in which at least 4,500 girls and women are believed to have been forcibly fitted with the contraceptive coil without their consent or knowledge at the hands of Danish doctors between 1966 and 1970 alone in an attempt to reduce the population of the former Danish colony.
But having spent the last week in Denmark for meetings that were planned before Trump’s renewed interest in Greenland became a point of global interest and alarm in some quarters, Nathanielsen said she was suddenly inundated with interest.
“In my everyday life as a minister for natural resources in Greenland I get a lot of attention from foreign press … I hardly ever speak to Danish press,” she said.
“The IUD scandal is another example. I get a lot of attention from outside media but from the Danish perspective they’re just not that interested. So I think this has been a wake-up call to Copenhagen.”
She added that it was also true of Danish interest in the parenting test scandal which has resulted in the separation of Greenlandic parents from children.
Amid growing calls for independence from Denmark, Greenland will leverage US interest to demand justice from Denmark, she said.
“I expect that from our side we will use this renewed interest in our relationship [with Denmark] to underscore the importance that they do not stop here. They have to look at the IUD scandal, they have to look at the adoptions and they have to claim responsibility and make sure these cases are settled and to make sure that we can give peace to the people who have been involved. I will definitely continue the pressure.”
Greenland and the US are already collaborating on minerals as a result of a 2019 agreement made during the first Trump administration, but that agreement is coming to an end. Nathanielsen said Greenland was hoping for a new agreement.
So far, the US and Greenland’s collaboration on minerals has included mapping, analysis, field work and direct marketing, she said. Now she hopes it will lead to financing to help get projects under way.
