Greenland : Tillie Martinussen's statement

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Much has been said about Greenland in the past few weeks, but very little have we heard from Greenlanders themselves, besides a statement by their prime minister speaking about a deal made without consulting 'them', or a few street interviews probing for opinions within a few seconds.

Below is one striking argument by Tillie Martinussen. It can be seen in a video which exists, but which is nearly impossible to find even with a record of its title. I thought it might be worth transcribing it in #solidarity with Greenlandic people (a translation in French will follow) ... 

"I think Trump doesn't know about Greenlandic people.

We don't really value cash, and Kardashian lips, and fake boobs and stuff like that very highly [laughs].

Actually, you cannot even own land in Greenland. You can get an allotment for your house, and then you own your house on top of the land, but Greenlanders don't believe in 'the land is for one person'. It's for everyone. And so is the seas (...) 

So it's a big miscalculation that he thinks that Greenlanders would be incited by cash, or something like that. We are not.

And even if he were to say like a hundred thousand dollars per person, or something like that, we wouldn't give up free healthcare, we wouldn't give up free education, we wouldn't give up being a part of Europe, we wouldn't give up on our sovereignty, eventually.

We are a very sovereign people within the kingdom of Denmark. We're autonomous right now.

We do not want to be rich like the Americans are. See how greedy they are ? They are even trying to shoot their friends, or invade their friends just for greed.

We know that there is minerals and oils possibly in our underground, and that's worth so much more, even than that. But even if we didn't have that, we would still not be bought. 

Everyone here knows about the Inuits in Alaska and all of the native tribes, American indians, who are there. Their lands was taken from them, and they haven't been treated that well in America. And we know that Trump is very much surrounding himself - at least - with 'white power' people. And we are not white as you can see [laughs], we are of color. And so we know our rights would probably be taken away.

We also know that we are very good as we are together with Denmark. As mentionned before, we have free healthcare, we have free study. Whatever you want you can study, you can do that for free, and actually the government will give you money to study. So while you are studying, you are getting a grant from your government. So all of that, the welfare state, we wouldn't trade for anything in America. 

Also, you have to remember that a lot of Greenlanders have family. Their mother or father, or grandmother or grandfather is Danish. We do have a 400 years history together, or more, in terms of being interconnected in that way. 

We are also seeing a lot of protests in the US right now, that is unsettling, with the ICE agents who are sort of going after a lot of people. From here it looks like maybe he's going a lot after brown people, and we are considered brown people as you can see so we would rather stay with Denmark, thank you.

America has had up to 17 bases here and they have closed them all down : the Pituffik Space Base. America could amp up the base presence, their military presence, and even their military capabilities, all they wanted to. So that is not the argument.

Of course everyone in Greenland knows this. We may not be many, but we read, we are educated [smile], and we know about the news of the world, especially regarding our own country. So we know about the treaties that we have with America.

This is very much akin to when you have a dog sledge team, when he's using that analogy, and one of the dogs all of a sudden turns around and bites you. You have to take it out of the kennel, you have to take it outside, and you have to shoot it.

Of course, we are not going to shoot Americans, we are peaceful people, but you cannot trust that dog anymore. Forever.

America has 10,000 soldiers trained for combat in arctic society. Finland alone has 35,000.

If we wanted to escalate, we also could impose dropping all treasury bonds, right ? That would hurt.

When we look at France and Canada, and all of the allies that are coming to our rush right now,  a very big arsenal of soldiers, and of weapons especially. I mean : Americans had to borrow Denmark's warships for Arctic seas, so it's not a given that America wins here.

We fought alongside America in a lot of other wars around the world, because we wanted to adhere to the treaties that we had gone through, but they have seen that some of the streetfighting in Syria has been very very hard on Western soldiers, right [smile]. I imagine that it would probably be the same [laughs] in Greenland. It would be like something else.

I wouldn't laugh it off, but of course nobody wants war and nobody wants to be invaded.

Of course, there are bad chapters with Denmark and Greenland because we have a 400-year history, but actually I also saw a Youtube video that kind of emerged recently, that said American soldiers were very bad to some of our people here too in Arsuk, which is a small settlement here. Some of the elders who remember them said : some of those guys were really not that good.

So it really doesn't matter what happened between Denmark and Greenland : we'll figure that out. Denmark and Greenland is fine as we are. We will figure it out. If we want to be independent, Greenlanders should be able to decide that, not with pressure from a superpower somewhere.

And we are well aware that if we would become independent tomorrow, he would just invade us, because he would have no problems with NATO, Europe, you know, everything else.

I think he's banking in some very insulting way that Greenlanders are stupid uneducated people who doesn't follow the news around the world. We are not : we are the exact opposite.

We're going to be here hundreds of years after Donald Trump. Even if he invaded us, I think we would wait him out just like bad weather. Everyone here knows that the weather decides. If we get a storm, we may have to hunker down for a day or two and we will hunker down for a year or two, or even ten years, or twenty years, and then go back to Denmark as soon as Trump and his likes are gone.

We want a peaceful solution and Trump seems to be the only one who wants to fight. I don't even think the American military want to fight. It just seems crazy and unhinged.

It seems like he's going to pay off some of his wealthy donors so he can run for president a third time, to be honest. That's what most Greenlanders are thinking. We don't know, but that's what we are thinking.

They already did a poll last year. 6% only was pro-american, and I have seen a lot of videos on social media lately, where they are saying 'I am sorry, I was wrong about MAGA, I was wrong about America', so I would think it would even be less percent now. (...) 85% overwhermingly said no last year, and the percentage is higher now so no. So no, decisively no.

Nobody wants NATO to be pitted against each other. Nobody. Except Donald Trump. And nobody knows why. What we are thinking is : is he good friends with Putin ? Or what is happening here ?

Nobody wants Greenland to be a battleground, but we have seen a lot of nations kind of step up, and as I mentionned, they are trying to do the last friendly gesture towards America, as well as display. We do actually have military capabilities.

We still want to be friends, but as you saw today, the Canadian prime minister went to China to try and make new relations. If Donald Trump wants a new world order, okay, then that's what he's gonna get.

74% of Americans do not want to invade Greenland, and I think probably amongst those 74%, most of the military capability is probably in there, because they know they would be attacking a NATO ally, they know they would be going into a European country and since World War 2, the Western hemisphere has kind of banded together.

So it's weird that he's trying to do that.

Some Europeans are hoping that maybe he's just trying to get them to really ampup their military quick. I don't think so. I think he wants Greenland. We'll see."