Greenland, a native nation of North America
Greenland is an autonomous country under the Danish
crown located in a very large island of the northeastern region of the arctic North American archipelago.
It is situated between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans,
east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.. Physiographically is a part of North America, However, Greenland has been politically and culturally
associated with Europe (specifically Norway and Denmark, the colonial powers,
as well as the nearby island of Iceland) for more than a millennium.
The area is 2,166,086 km2, making Greenland the largest island of the world, its population is 62,000 people.
The capital, located in the southwestern coast is Nuuk with 20,000 inhabitants..
The majority of the population belongs to the Greenlandic Inuit ethnic group (in Greenlandic: kalaallit: kalaallit, in
Danish: Grønlandsk Inuit).
Most speak Greenlandic (Western
Greenlandic, Kalaallisut) and consider themselves ethnically Greenlandic.
Approximately 90 percent of Greenland's population of 62,000 is Greenlandic Inuit, or 56,000 people.
There are three major native Greenlandic groups:
The Kalaallit of west Greenland, who
speak Kalaallisut
the Tunumiit of Tunu (east Greenland), who
speak Tunumiit oraasiat ("East Greenlandic").
the Inughuit of north Greenland, who
speak Inuktun ("Polar Eskimo")
Historically, Kalaallit referred specifically to
the people of Western Greenland. Northern Greenlanders call themselves
Avanersuarmiut or Inughuit and Eastern Greenlanders call
themselves Tunumiit, respectively.
Today, most Greenlanders are bilingual speakers
of Kalaallisut and Danish and most trace their lineage to
the first Inuit that came to Greenland. The vast majority of ethnic
Greenlanders reside in Greenland or elsewhere in Danish Realm,
primarily Denmark proper (approximately 20,000 Greenlanders
reside in Denmark proper). A small minority reside in other countries, mostly
elsewhere in Scandinavia and North America. There are some Greenlanders
who are multiracial, mostly due to Danish colonists and other
Europeans marrying into Inuit families.
The Inuit are descended from the Thule people, who
settled Greenland in between AD 1200 and 1400. As 84 percent of Greenland's
land mass is covered by the Greenland ice sheet, Inuit people live in
three regions: Polar, Eastern, and Western. In the 1850s, additional Canadian
Inuit joined the Polar Inuit communities.[13]
The Eastern Inuit, or Tunumiit, live in the area with the
mildest climate, a territory called Tunuor or Tasiilaq. Hunters can
hunt marine mammals from kayaks throughout the year.
Kalaallisut is the official language of
Greenland. It is the western variety of the Greenlandic language, which is
one of the Inuit languages within the Eskimo-Aleut family.
Kalaallisut is taught in schools and used widely in
Greenlandic media.
The first people arrived in northeast Greenland from the
Canadian island of Ellesmere, around 2500 to 2000 BCE, from where they
colonized north Greenland as the independence culture and south Greenland
as the Saqqaq culture. The Early Dorset replaced these early Greenlanders
around 700 BCE, and themselves lived on the island until c. AD 1.
These people were
unrelated to the Inuit. Save for a Late Dorset recolonisation of northeast
Greenland c. AD 700, the island was then uninhabited until the Norse arrived in
the 980s. Between 1000 and 1400, the Thule, ancestors of the
Inuit, replaced the Dorset in Arctic Canada, and then moved into Greenland
from the north. The Norse disappeared from southern Greenland in the 15th
century, and although Scandinavians revisited the island in the 16th and 17th
centuries, they did not resettle until 1721. In 1814, the Treaty of
Kiel awarded Greenland to Denmark.
The primary method of survival for the Thule was hunting
seal, narwhal, and walrus as well as gathering local plant
material. Archaeological evidence of animal remains suggests that the
Thule were well adjusted to Greenland and in such a way that they could afford
to leave potential sources of fat behind.
European visitors to Northeast Greenland before the early
19th century reported evidence of extensive Inuit settlement in the region
although they encountered no humans. In 1823, Douglas Charles
Clavering met a group of twelve Inuit in Clavering Island. Later
expeditions, starting with the Second German North Polar
Expedition in 1869, found the remains of many former settlements, but the
population had apparently died out during the intervening years.
In 1979, the Greenlanders voted to become autonomous. There
is an active independence movement.
The population of Greenlandic Inuit has fluctuated over the
years. A smallpox outbreak reduced the population from 8,000 to 6,000 in the
18th century. The population doubled in 1900 to 12,000 then steadily rose
by around 100 people each year from 1883-1919. Tuberculosis caused a drop
in the population, but after several decades of steady birth rates and
commercial fishing over traditional hunting, the population reached 41,000 in
1980.
Gender roles among Greenlandic Inuit are flexible;
however, historically men hunted and women prepared the meat and skins. Most
marriages are by choice, as opposed to arranged, and monogamy is commonplace. Extended
families are important to Inuit society.
Greenland Inuit diet consists of a combination of
local or traditional dishes and imported foods, with the majority of Inuit,
aged 18 to 25 and 60 and older, preferring customary, local foods like whale
skin and dried cod over imported foods like sausage or chicken. That study
also reveals that those who grew up in villages only consumed local, Inuit
cuisine foods 31 times a month and those who lived in Danish areas would
consume local, Inuit cuisine 17 times per month. The reasons for the lack
of traditional food consumption varies, but 48 percent of respondents claim
that they wanted to have variety in their diet, 45 percent of respondents said
it was difficult to obtain traditional foods, and 39 precent said that
traditional foods were too expensive. The kinds of whale that have been
historically hunted and consumed are the Minke and Fin whales, both are under
watch by the International Whaling Commission (IWC). Greenland Home
Rule implemented IWC quotas on aboriginal whale hunting, reducing hunting of
Minke whales to a maximum of 115 per year and Fin whales to 21 per year.
