Greenlanders speak out against Danish rule: They stole our future

NUUK, Greenland — Native Greenlander Amarok Peterson was 27 years old when she learned the gut-wrenching truth about why she couldn’t have children — and that Denmark was to blame. At 13, she became one of hundreds of Greenlandic girls subjected to forced sterilization by Danish doctors who implanted an IUD in her womb without her knowledge.“The Danes don’t see us as humans,” Petersen told The Post in a local Inuit restaurant overlooking Nuuk’s famous fjords.“They think we’re too expensive, too small a population.

But they take our land, our children, our lives and expect thanks.”While the government of Denmark officially apologized last year for decades of forced contraception of Indigenous women and girls, the horrific mistreatment has cast a long shadow on the island that has become the center of an international ownership fight.This week, the Danes hosted European troops for military exercises on Greenland, asserting they are protecting the island from outside powers — particularly the United States.But for many Inuit, Denmark itself has long been the real threat.“I will never have children,” Petersen said, with tears of anger and sorrow welling in her eyes.

“That choice was taken from me.”Even in adulthood, medical decisions were made without her consent.Plagued with problems after the IUD, she had repeated surgeries for unexplained pain.

It wasn’t until years later that doctors informed her that her fallopian tubes had been removed in one of the operations in the early 2000s.Her family also suffered under Denmark’s so-called “Little Danes experiment,” in which Greenlandic children were forcibly sent to Denmark for adoption or institutional care — often permanently separated from their families, she said.The program, which ran from the 1950s through the 1970s, was part of Denmark’s broader effort to assimilate Greenlandic children, often without parental consent.It happened to her mother’s brother, Petersen said....