Greenland’s Indigenous women deserve more than financial compensation

A group of women in Greenland say Danish doctors involuntarily sterilised them with intrauterine devices.

Indigenous women across the globe have a traumatic historical relationship with genocide. Attempts to wipe-out indigenous populations have been pervasive across the West and beyond, but they appear in many forms, some more overtly insidious than others.

From ‘residential schools’ to social and financial isolation, Indigenous people have and continue to face both casual and violent racism.

But in Greenland, a deeply disturbing case of Indigenous ethnic cleansing has resurfaced. A group of 67 women have come forward demanding compensation from the Danish government, after they claimed Danish doctors forced them to have intrauterine devices (IUDs) inserted as teenagers.

The group claim to be part of a larger body of 4,500 women, who were fitted with coils in order to limit birth rates amongst Greenland’s indigenous population.

The country was a Danish colony at the time, in 1953.