Pipaluk Lynge knows the history of how Indigenous people have been treated in the United States. And she’s well aware of the holes in the country’s health care system and its yawning economic inequality.
Ms. Lynge, one of Greenland’s top officials and the leader of the Parliament’s foreign and security policy committee, chafes at President Trump’s offer to buy Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, and his insistence that Greenlanders would be better off as Americans.
“We’re not going to sell our soul,” she said. “We’re not stupid.”
As President Trump seems to toy with Greenland’s fate, a kaleidoscope of feelings swirl in Greenland itself. People are shocked, angry, confused, humiliated, insulted and, most of all, scared.
For centuries, the world has mostly ignored this gigantic slab of ice and rock poking into the Arctic Circle and the Inuit people who learned to survive on it. It has been a distant part of the Danish Realm for more than 300 years, and now Greenlanders are trying to insert themselves into the discussions about their future before it’s too late.
On Wednesday, Greenland’s foreign minister is set to take part in a high-powered meeting in Washington, the first time this island has ever been directly involved in something of this magnitude. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance are holding talks with Greenlandic and Danish officials in the shadow of escalating threats from Mr. Trump, who recently vowed to “do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not.”
Interviews in the past few days with Greenlanders from different parts of the territory and different walks of life reveal that people on the island don’t want to be recolonized by a new outside power, and that only a small minority has even the faintest flicker of interest in joining the United States.
They like their Scandinavian welfare system, with its free health care, free education and strong safety net. They feel connected to Denmark even if there are still raw feelings about earlier eras of colonialism and abuse.
And they certainly don’t want to be bought by anyone, but acknowledge that economically they can’t stand on their own two feet.
“It’s not the time to be independent,” said Nielsine Lange, a special-education teacher in Ilulissat, a town on the west coast. “It would be too dangerous, and people wouldn’t be responsible enough. We need to pull ourselves together first — independence is a goal, but there’s a long way to go.”
