GUARDIANS OF THE ARCTIC
No one owns our land, we share it, say Greenland's Inuit
United States President Donald Trump discusses Greenland as a strategic asset that could be acquired by Washington, while Denmark asserts its legal sovereignty over the island. However, for the Inuit people, who have lived here for centuries, no one owns the Arctic land.
The concept that ownership is shared collectively is central to the Inuit identity, they say. It has survived 300 years of colonization and is written into law: People can own houses, but not the land beneath them.
"We can't even buy our own land ourselves, but Trump wants to buy it — that's so strange to us," said Kaaleeraq Ringsted, 74, in Kapisillit, a tiny settlement of wooden houses clinging to the shore of a fjord east of the capital, Nuuk.
"Since childhood, I have been used to the idea that you can only rent land. We have always been used to the idea that we collectively own our land."
Greenland and its people were thrust into the global spotlight last year when Trump revived his demand that the US take control of the island for national security and to access its abundant mineral resources.
Trump has since backed away from threats that the US could take the island by force and said he had secured total and permanent US access to Greenland in a deal with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, but much of the detail remains unclear.
Nearly 90 percent of Greenland's 57,000 population is indigenous Inuit, who have inhabited the island continuously for around 1,000 years.
Rakel Kristiansen, from a family of shamanic practitioners, said Inuit people saw themselves as temporary guardians of the land.
'A wrong question'
"In our understanding, owning land is the wrong question," Kristiansen said. "The question should be who is responsible for the land. The land existed before us, and it will exist after us." Back in Kapisillit, a cold wind sweeps down from the Greenland ice sheet. Two sea eagles circle above the fjord and seagulls cluster around fishing boats.
Here, the focus is on survival.
But there are fewer hunters and fishermen now, as the pull of education, jobs and services has drawn people away from the settlement in recent decades.
At the school, William, 8, Malerak, 7, and Viola, 7, are the only remaining students, studying beneath a map of Greenland printed in 1954. During recess, they go sledding. All three are moving away soon, and the school may close.
New holiday homes, some with outdoor hot tubs, have been built along the bay for wealthy Nuuk residents. They stand empty and shuttered in winter.
From a nearby cliff, an iceberg-filled fjord is visible. The scenery could draw tourism, but the village lacks even basic infrastructure.
"There's a risk the settlement could die," Village Leader Heidi Lennert Nolso said. "People are getting old."
Kapisillit once had nearly 500 residents at its peak, said Kristiane Josefsen, a lifelong resident. Today it has 37. Josefsen, born in 1959, works with sealskin — washing, processing and scraping it to sell in Nuuk for national costumes.
"Scraping sealskins is very hard on the body," she said. But though she plans to retire this year, she does not intend to leave. "I'm staying here. I belong here," she said. "This is my land. Greenland is my land."
