The Greenlandic Reconciliation Commission: Ethnonationalism, Arctic Resources, and Post-Colonial Identity

Abstract

This chapter addresses the Greenlandic Reconciliation Commission established in 2014. Examining the different agendas and political positions that have shaped the debate around reconciliation, the author shows how the political processes that led to the Act on Greenland Self-Government in 2009 ran parallel to the UN negotiations on the rights of indigenous peoples, while the term “indigenous peoples” is not mentioned anywhere in the act. She argues that the Greenland public discourse of indigeneity is currently being transformed from a language of resistance to a language of independent governance, providing a model of global significance in terms of postcolonial identity and ethnonationalism. The Reconciliation Commission negotiations furthermore address Greenland’s interest in establishing itself as an Arctic resource extraction economy while recognizing its colonial and postcolonial dependency on Denmark.