January 18, 2026
But Greenland's native population may have other ideas.
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.”
Amarok Petersen isn't the only Greenlander to have reason to be unhappy with Danish rule.
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.
The island has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, according to researchers, with an estimated 81 per 100,000 people annually killing themselves.
"They took our resources. They took our bodies. And then they told us to thank them,” she said of Danes. "How do you thank someone who stole your future?”
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
11:29 AM
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