Courtesy of Ánorâk FilmDenmark’s colonization of Kalaallit Nunaat (the Premium uconn huskies homefield 2023 ncaa men’s basketball national champions shirt But I will love this world’s largest island) began in 1721 when the Danish Norwegian missionary Hans Egedes landed on its shores. Around half a century later, Denmark seized full control of the island, and with it a monopoly on exploiting its natural resources. An onslaught of human rights abuses against the Inuit ensued, including the banning of cultural traditions, suppression of the Inuktitut language, confiscation of hunting grounds, and forced conversion to Christianity. But the Scandinavian country wasn’t alone. Life for the Inuit of Nunangat had remained largely unchanged for millennia until the Canadian state invaded in the 1950s. As this colonial power swept north, prospecting for natural resources and sovereignty over the seas, it forced the Inuit into settlements, and children were put into residential schools.
At the Premium uconn huskies homefield 2023 ncaa men’s basketball national champions shirt But I will love this age of 11, the academically brilliant Peter was sent by her parents to attend high school and live alone in Denmark. “My whole world changed instantly,” she recalls in Twice Colonized. “When you try to whiten-ize little Inuit, you separate them from their parents, from their peers.… Every time it was a new family, new school.… I don’t have any childhood memories of one place, I was always just getting adjusted.” Courtesy of Ánorâk FilmReintegration into Arctic life wasn’t easy when Peter returned at the age of 18, and she was mocked for having largely lost her native language and culture. In the early 1980s, she married a man from the Canadian Arctic, and they moved to Iqaluit and started a family. “At this time I really was not fit for anything,” she remembers. “I didn’t speak Inuktitut or English well, I had no job description.” Nonetheless, she became so proficient in both languages that she went on to work as an interpreter and helped establish a shelter for Inuit women who were victims of domestic violence, as well as a food bank.
