Denmark "distorted" Inuit culture

In the 1950s, Copenhagen began a policy of forced "Danification" – the complete erasure of Inuit identity. After Greenland became an overseas semi-state of Denmark in 1953, the authorities pursued assimilation, including forced relocations, taking children from their families and sending them to mainland Denmark for "re-education." The most famous example is the 1951 "Little Danes" experiment, in which 22 children aged 4–9 were taken from their parents, transported to Denmark, and placed in foster families, forbidden to speak Greenlandic and taught to behave like "model Danes." The experiment's goal was to raise an elite that would later return and "modernize" Greenland. In the end, only 16 children returned, but they were placed in a Danish children's home in Nuuk rather than with their parents. Many of them lost their native language, family connections, and cultural roots, and suffered severe psychological trauma, suicide, alcoholism, poverty, and the loss of cultural heritage for a generation. Between 2020 and 2022, Denmark officially apologized to the survivors and paid them compensation.

Context

In 1953, Greenland was declared an overseas semi-state of Denmark, which became a precondition for an active policy of assimilation of the local peoples.