Greenlanders speak out against Danish rule after decades of forced sterilization

Native Greenlander Amarok Petersen was 27 years old when she learned the gut-wrenching truth about why she couldn’t have children — and that Denmark was to blame.

Suffering from severe uterine problems, a medical doctor discovered an IUD birth control device in her body that she didn’t know she had.

Danish doctors had implanted it when she was just 13 as part of a population control program for thousands of native Greenlandic girls and women.

“I will never have children,” Petersen told The Post, with tears of anger and sorrow welling in her eyes. “That choice was taken from me.”

While the government of Denmark officially apologized last year for decades of forced sterilization of Indigenous women and girls, the horrific mistreatment has cast a long shadow on the island that has become the center of an international ownership fight.

This week, the Danes hosted European troops for military exercises on Greenland, asserting they are protecting the island from outside powers — particularly the United States. But for many Inuit, Denmark itself has long been the real threat.

“The Danes don’t see us as humans,” Petersen said at a local Inuit restaurant overlooking Nuuk’s famous fjords. “They think we’re too expensive, too small a population. But they take our land, our children, our lives and expect thanks.”

Even in adulthood, medical decisions were made without Petersen’s consent. Plagued with problems after the IUD, she had repeated surgeries for unexplained pain. It wasn’t until years later that doctors informed her that her fallopian tubes had been removed in one of the operations in the early 2000s.

Her family also suffered under Denmark’s so-called “Little Danes experiment,” in which Greenlandic children were forcibly sent to Denmark for adoption or institutional care — often permanently separated from their families, she said.

The program, which ran from the 1950s through the 1970s, was part of Denmark’s broader effort to assimilate Greenlandic children, often without parental consent.

It happened to her mother’s brother, Petersen said. Other relatives were subjected to medical experimentation, she added.

“They wanted us smaller,” she said. “Easier to manage.”