COPENHAGEN (Dispatches) - Six people who were part of a failed 1950s social experiment have won compensation from Denmark’s government and will receive a face-to-face apology from the prime minister later.
They were among 22 Inuit children sent to Denmark from Greenland in 1951 to learn Danish. It was part of a scheme to raise “model” Greenlanders to help bridge Danish and indigenous cultures.
However, the children remained separated from their families, lost their mother tongue and struggled with identity issues.
Faced with legal action, the Danish government settled and agreed to pay damages of 250,000 Danish kroner ($38,000) to each of the six. The other 16 people involved have since passed away.
The children, all aged four to nine, were first placed in a care home and then lived with Danish foster parents.
The project was prestigious. It featured in magazine spreads, and the children were even visited by the Queen of Denmark.
A year and a half later, 16 of them returned to Greenland, while six were adopted.
But back in Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, the children were not reunited with their families.
Instead they were placed in an orphanage and attended a Danish-language school.
But, unable to speak the local language, they were marginalised in their homeland.
Though the experiment took place decades ago, the consequences have been far-reaching.
A 2020 report, commissioned by the previous government, found that half the children later experienced mental health problems or alcohol abuse. There were cases of homelessness and “rootless lives”. Most died relatively early and one took their own life.
“They sort of lost their identity,” says Einar Lund Jensen, one of the co-authors of the report.
Today, Greenland is a self-governing territory within the kingdom of Denmark, but earlier it was a colony.
After World War Two, European colonialism began to unravel, but Greenland remained in Danish hands, and during the 1950s plans were rolled out to speed up its development.
Denmark was under pressure from the UN, the Danish public and Greenlandic politicians to improve living conditions there, says Mr Jensen. “Danish language and knowledge of Danish European culture were seen as a means to get equality.”
It’s against this backdrop that the 1951 project was drawn up.