The Danish colonists separated them from their surroundings and families when they were children
Danes of Greenlandic descent are victims of a failed social experiment
Thiessen did not enjoy living with her mother and returned to Denmark.
From the source
Christine Hensen visits the cemetery of her companions in Denmark.
From the source
Denmark separated its colonies to create an elite of intellectuals.
From the source
The children were separated from their families and placed in orphanages.
From the source
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Seven-year-old Helen Thiessen looked up from the passenger ship MS Disco, knowing it was sailing from Greenland to a place called Denmark.
What she couldn't understand was why her mother agreed to send her away on that unfortunate day in 1951. She remembers that moment well. "I was so sad," she says.
Thiessen, now 77, was crushed by grief, unable to escape and run towards her mother and two brothers, who came to see her off at the harbor of Greenland's capital, Nuuk.
She says: "I looked into my mother's eyes and was surprised: Why did you let me go?"
Thiessen was one of 22 Inuit children in Greenland who were separated from their families not knowing they would become part of a failed social experiment.
These children were between five and nine years old, many of whom were never able to see their families or live with them again, as they became forgotten and marginalized in their home country.
At the time, Greenland was a Danish colony, and Greenlanders suffered from high levels of poverty, a low quality of life and high mortality rates, says Einar Lund Jensen, a researcher with a Danish National Museum project.
elite of intellectuals
“Denmark's goal in that experiment was to create an elite of intellectuals,” says Jensen, who co-authored a recent government-commissioned report investigating that experiment. It protects its interests at a time when decolonization movements are sweeping the world, after World War II.
Jensen adds that the government got the idea from Save the Children Denmark to bring Inuit children into the country in order to save Greenland from what were seen as poor living conditions.
The assumption at the time was that "Danish society is superior to Greenlandic society," says Jensen.
After a year and a half in Denmark, most of the children were brought back to Greenland to live in an orphanage run by another charity, the Danish Red Cross, in Nuuk - separated from Greenlanders and their families and forbidden to speak their mother tongue.
The people of Greenland came to see these children as strangers, so they returned to Denmark when they became adults.
As many as half of the group developed mental illness or substance use problems later in life, Jensen says.
Thiessen says many of them have become unemployed and have lived hard lives.
The government took our identity
"The Danish government took our identity and our family from us," says one such case, Christine Heinsen.
Heinesen is 76 and, along with Theissen, is one of six survivors of Greenland's social experiments who are still alive.
She wanders into a cemetery in Copenhagen where some of her experienced friends are buried, and admits that her life was fine during her days in the orphanage.
"But I know a lot of other kids have struggled growing up, and I think we're only left with six out of 22," she says.
Jensen says the aim of the experiment, which began planning in 1950, was to recruit orphans, but that it was difficult to find enough orphaned children.
He added that the criteria were expanded to include orphans and their families, and 22 children were selected, although many of them were living with their extended family or a single parent.
Thiessen said her mother, who was a widow, initially refused two Danes' requests to take her young daughter to Denmark.
But in the end she agreed on the promise that Thiessen would get a better education.
It was difficult for a Greenlander to turn down the offer at the time, says Carla Jason Williamson, associate professor at the University of Saskatchewan in Greenland, who is also a member of the Greenland Conciliation Commission.
According to the report Jensen co-authored about the experiment, there were doubts about whether some parents were fully aware or if they understood what they agreed to.
In many ways, what happened to the children, Williamson says, is the deliberate and destructive effect of cultural eradication during colonialism. “In the colonial era, there was a tendency to eliminate the uniqueness of culture, the relationship to the land, the range of languages, and spirituality, and it would have been eliminated so that he could The colonizer becomes social and forms part of the colonial state.”
Upon their arrival in Denmark, the children were accommodated in a holiday camp run by Save the Children, on the southern Vidette peninsula, for four months.
The children were forbidden to speak Greenlandic, and instead were taught Danish.
The children were terrified and amazed at the same time by their new surroundings.
Heinsen was only five years old at the time, and she remembers all the trees vividly. "We don't have any trees in Greenland, so I remember how tall and big those trees were," she says.
They were subsequently placed with separate foster families for about a year.
Thiessen did not feel welcome in her adoptive family's home.
She had to apply eczema ointment and was not allowed to sit on furniture. "I was homesick every day," she said.
Her second adoptive family was more kind, bought her a bicycle and a doll, and treated her as part of the family.
When it was time to return to Greenland, six of the Inuit children remained in Denmark, and were adopted by their foster families.
Historian Jensen says the adoptions were "against the whole idea of returning to Greenland and becoming the intelligentsia".
They returned to Greenland in October 1952, and were placed in an orphanage run by the Danish Red Cross in Nuuk.
According to the legal claim, custody of the children was transferred to the headmistress of the orphanage.
Greenland was fully incorporated into Denmark in 1953, and in 1979 it was granted self-government.
It was during this period, says Jensen, that the Danish and Greenlandic authorities lost interest in the social experiment, with Greenlandic infrastructure projects, business and health care reforms taking center stage.
• The purpose of the experiment, the planning of which began in 1950, was to recruit orphans, but it was difficult to find a sufficient number of orphaned children.
• What happened to children is, in many ways, the deliberate and destructive effects of cultural extirpation during colonialism.
Strangers at home
Greenlanders began to consider children strangers after returning from Denmark.
"Greenland children in Nuuk tell us you don't know Greenland, you are strangers to Greenland, and they are throwing stones at us," says Gabriel Schmidt, 76, one of six social experimenters who now lives in Denmark.
"But most of what they said I did not understand, because I lost my mother tongue," he adds from his home in Denmark.
On her return from Denmark, Thiessen remembers seeing her family waiting for her at Nuuk pier.
"I dropped my bag on the ground and ran to them, and told them everything I saw," she says, "but my mother did not answer me."
It was because she spoke Danish, and her mother spoke a Greenlandic Inuit dialect, a language that Thyssen had lost the ability to understand.
Their reunion lasted 10 minutes.
A Danish nurse who takes care of children told her to give up her mother and live in an orphanage. “I cried all the way to the orphanage – I was so looking forward to seeing my town, but I couldn't see anything through my tears,” she says.
Lived in the orphanage 16 children.
They were only allowed to speak Danish, were placed in a Danish-speaking school, and had limited or no contact with their families.
No one told Hensen that her biological mother died shortly after she joined the orphanage.
The focus has been on keeping in touch with foster families, Jensen says.
Thiessen's mother was only allowed to visit her daughter twice in the seven years she was there.
It was traumatic, says Jensen, "that these children were so separated from Greenlandic society and their parents." "Even those who had families in Nuuk said they were not allowed to visit their families, and sometimes the orphanage would invite the family for coffee on Sundays," Jensen says. But children are not given a fair chance to contact their families.”
belated apology
In 2015 Save the Children apologized for the role it played in the social experiment.
The victims' lawyer, Mads Krueger Bramming, said the Danish government issued an apology five years later, after pressure from social activists, but refused to compensate those still alive.
He filed a compensation claim for 250,000 crowns ($38,000) for each of the victims in Copenhagen District Court in late December 2021.
The remaining six accuse the Danish state of acting “in violation of existing Danish law and human rights, including their right to private and family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights,” as stated in their claim.
In a statement to CNN, the Danish Minister of Social Affairs and the Elderly says that the government is studying the compensation case.
The most important aspect for the Danish government was a formal apology to the victims and their families for the betrayal they had suffered.
This was a major step toward correcting the failure of the government;
It is a "responsibility that no previous government has assumed," says one of the government officials.
"The government believes that recognizing the mistakes of the past is very important in itself, and we must learn from those mistakes so that history does not repeat itself," he added.
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