Greenland's independence drive turned on its head by Trump

Ajouté : 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]In the old days, when we still lived our own lives in our own country.

[00:00:05]>> This is Aqqaluk Lynge, poet, activist, and one of the founding fathers of the Greenlandic independence movement.

[00:00:12]For decades, he urged his people to distance themselves [music] from Denmark, which he denounced as an exploitative colonial overlord.

[00:00:19]But today, Aqqaluk Lynge has changed [music] his mind. And he's not the only one.

[00:00:25]Reuters traveled to his home in Nuuk, Greenland's capital, to see how his evolution reflects the country's wider shift in the face of what Aqqaluk sees as a much bigger threat is US President Donald Trump and his repeated push for control of the Arctic island.

[00:00:40]>> They want to grab everything.

[00:00:42]And that's so such a behavior is very difficult for all of us in the world to deal with, especially for uh a peaceful uh people like us. Our ancestors have been living here for 4,500 years.

[00:01:00]>> Aqqaluk told us he now feels strongly that Greenland should remain part of the Kingdom of Denmark.

[00:01:05]Why?

[00:01:06]Because he sees the country as a safeguard against pressure from the United States. Over the last year, the political debate in Greenland has seen a dramatic change under threat from Trump.

[00:01:18]Almost everyone here agrees that greater self-determination from Denmark is a non-negotiable.

[00:01:24]But the pace of that change and how it's achieved, that has seen a remarkable shift.

[00:01:31]To understand Aqqaluk's position, we need to understand the world he grew up in.

[00:01:35]Denmark colonized the island centuries ago and still controls its foreign policy and defense.

[00:01:41]Aqqaluk was among a generation of young Greenlanders sent to [music] Denmark for education.

[00:01:46]And that experience planted the seeds of a growing sense of anger.

[00:01:50]>> I am the that generation that have built this >> [snorts] >> new society we have in Greenland. In our youth, we had the much talk about how the political future of Greenland would be. And through that, we challenged the colonial period and and we ended up having home rule '79 and full autonomy from 2009.

[00:02:20]>> When he returned home in 1976, he co-founded Inuit Ataqatigiit, which became one of Greenland's main pro-independence parties.

[00:02:29]Over the following decades, those parties won [music] increasing levels of home rule.

[00:02:33]Then came Donald Trump.

[00:02:35]>> We need Greenland for national security and even international security, and we're working with everybody involved to try and get it.

[00:02:44]>> Returning to the White House in 2025, the US president doubled down on his demands for Greenland, threatening tariffs on Denmark, and refusing to rule out the use of military force to take control of the island. It sent a political shockwave through Greenland.

[00:03:00]In Greenland's election in March last year, the center-right party, Demokraatit, which advocates a much more cautious approach to independence, surged from 9% of the vote to 30%. It became the island's largest party and formed a coalition government.

[00:03:16]>> So, we started saying Greenland is not for sale.

[00:03:20]We don't want to be Americans.

[00:03:22]We don't want to be Danish. We are Greenlanders, a part of the Kingdom of Denmark.

[00:03:31]>> Per Berthelsen is the founder of Demokraatit and was reelected to parliament aged 75.

[00:03:37]He was in a restaurant in Nuuk watching the results roll in.

[00:03:41]>> I said, I'm happy to say that I think this is going to be a historical election.

[00:03:50]>> For Aqqaluk, the result was an affirmation the warnings he'd been sounding about America's hostility since Trump's first term.

[00:03:57]>> They are ignorant. They know and nothing about diplomacy. They know nothing about the history.

[00:04:06]>> For years, Greenland pursued a tighter alignment with the United States, which it considered a crucial source of the financing that it needed to develop as a country and eventually pursue full self-determination. That has all changed.

[00:04:21]Following Trump's rhetoric and the American pressure campaign on Greenland, suddenly that investment, that engagement is much less welcome.

[00:04:30]And everything that the administration does here in Greenland is considered with skepticism and doubt.

[00:04:37]Three business figures told us they or their families have been stockpiling guns and ammunition for a potential American attack. And the proportion of Greenlanders suffering from mental distress jumped from 7% of the population to 31% in a year, [music] according to the local public health institute.

[00:04:54]Rasmus Leander Nielsen is a political analyst at Greenland's university.

[00:04:58]>> People are getting [music] really, really scared. We have massive demonstration in downtown Nuuk walking to the US consulate [music] to showcase that this is not okay. This is people are afraid. Children can't sleep.

[00:05:11]>> But not every Greenlander has drawn the same conclusion about Trump's intervention.

[00:05:15]Naleraq, the island's most radical pro-independence party, won 25% of the votes in the March election, up from 12%.

[00:05:24]>> [cheering and applause] >> Its argument that the situation with Trump is actually an opportunity to demand immediate independence from Denmark, not retreat into its arms.

[00:05:33]>> something that we are not >> Aqqaluk understands the political tension over Greenland's path forward.

[00:05:39]He sits with Reuters in his living room, icebergs floating outside in a nearby fjord.

[00:05:44]>> [music] >> He reads one of his earlier poems, from the fire of his youth describing Danes as contemptible beasts and reflects on how his feelings have changed.

[00:05:56]>> We have to rethink >> [music] >> many things.

[00:06:02]Now we understand that the only freedom [music] we have had for the last 300 years has been together [music] with them.

[00:06:10]All that dreams about forming a state >> [music] >> must stop. It's very difficult to understand that those dreams are just dreams and will never come true.

[00:06:23]>> [music]