Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has asked for forgiveness from Greenlandic women for the government’s birth control programme for Eskimo women. “We cannot change what has happened. But we can take responsibility,” she said in an official statement released on 27 August.
Along with Frederiksen, Greenland government chairman Jens-Frederik Nielsen apologised. “We recognise that this story is a source of anger and grief for many Greenlanders and many families in Greenland,” he was quoted as saying by DK.
An Eskimo sterilisation programme had existed in Greenland since the 1960s, with most cases occurring by the mid-seventies. Doctors fitted intrauterine contraceptive spirals to the islanders, often without warning them or obtaining their consent.
In the first five years of the contraceptive programme, about half of Greenland’s female population of fertile age was affected. In some cases, as young as 12-year-old girls were fitted with IUDs. This took place against the backdrop of a policy of “danitisation” of the island, with the Danes settling it and displacing the Eskimo population and culture.
In 2022, the government initiated an investigation into the programme; it is due to be completed by September 1 this year. The 143 women are suing the state, demanding compensation of about $6.7 million. Former Greenland Prime Minister Muthe Bowrup Egede called the sterilisation programme “genocide”.
Denmark has had a law in place since 1929 allowing the government to sterilise children “morally unfit” for parenthood, DK told us. Under this programme, at least 11,000 Danish men and women were sterilised until 1967 – including criminals, people with psychiatric diagnoses, young people accused of “antisocial behaviour” and schoolchildren with poor academic performance. The last cases were recorded in 1972.