Truth and Reconciliation in Canada and Greenland

Over the past couple weeks, I went on a major trip with Mom. We visited parts of Greenland, Labrador, and Newfoundland on the expedition ship Ocean Endeavor, an excursion run by Adventure Canada. I plan to reflect on several aspects of the journey in the weeks ahead—and I’m starting with one aspect of the Inuit experience.

We were on the boat during Canada’s truth and reconciliation week, including Orange Shirt Day on September 30. There is so much to reflect on in terms of the way the Inuit have been treated—and in many cases, the horrors are still unfolding.

I’ve written before about the boarding schools for Native Americans in the US and Canada that sought to “civilize” the “natives” by stripping them of their language and culture. It turns out that as recently as thirty years ago, something just as horrific was taking place in Greenland. Called the spiral or coil case, this program involved implanting contraceptive IUDs in Inuit women (and children as young as twelve) when they underwent unrelated medical procedures—without the women’s knowledge or consent.

We learned that the Danish government justified this as a means to lower healthcare costs for the Inuit population—but the impact was truly genocidal. In some towns, the entire population of women was denied the opportunity to bear children, and the towns literally died out.

Take a moment to consider the implications in terms of lost heritage, cultural traditions, and family stories that weren’t passed down because there was no one to pass them on to. Think about the sense of betrayal the entire community must feel. Think about the fact that Greenland now has only 56,000 people when it should have over 100,000.

One of our expedition team members, Aka Simonsen, is an archaeologist from Greenland. On September 24, while we were on the ship together, news arrived that the Danish prime minister—a woman—had come to Nuuk, Greenland (pictured above) to apologize. It’s a small step, and a real one. Aka spoke to us in emotional terms about the impact on her family of both the policy and the apology.

It was a very powerful moment in a week of powerful and emotional moments (a dozen of our forty expedition team members were Inuit). We humans seem to be so much more efficient at treating each other badly than we are at living and loving together as one human community.

For these Inuit Greenlanders, I grieve the loss of potential, the loss of family, the loss of the joy of bearing and rearing children. What do you grieve in this story? What do you believe needs truth and reconciliation in your family, community, and/or country? What steps could you take or initiatives could you support to make that possible?