The Arctic Senator

– She is not the senator who shouts the loudest, but when she speaks, people listen.

This is how Aaja Chemnitz, a member of the Norwegian Parliament for Inuit Ataqatigiit, describes 68-year-old Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, who has just headed a delegation of US senators to Nuuk.

Lisa Murkowski is not shy about acknowledging that the trust that has been built up since World War II between Greenland and the United States with a few sentences from the American president and his government has been eroded and degraded.

– It hurts my heart to know how much anxiety and worry you feel in these times of uncertainty, she said, among other things, from the podium in Nuuk.

A political family

Lisa Murkowski was born in 1957 and grew up in various towns in Alaska. Her father, Frank Murkowski, was the director of the Alaska National Bank of the North and was elected to the Senate in 1980 and re-elected in 1986, 1992 and 1998. He was, among other things, chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and tried for several years to open the Arctic National Wildfire Refuge for oil drilling.

In 2002, he very unusually handed over his Senate seat to his daughter, after he himself had been elected governor. This sparked criticism of nepotism, but Lisa Murkowski won the people's favor and convincingly reelected two years later with 56 percent of the vote. She has since been re-elected several times, most recently in 2022.

“She is very popular,” says Niels Bjerre-Poulsen, who is an associate professor at the Center for American Studies at the University of Southern Denmark.

A divisive time

Alaska's population numbers just over 730,000. Of these, 20,000-30,000 are Inuit. The state was annexed by the United States in 1867.

A few hundred years later, large quantities of oil, gas and minerals were found in Alaska, which, according to professor of environmental assessment in the Arctic, Anne Merrild, created great division in the population, not least after the law “Native Landclaims Settlement Act” was implemented in 1974.

The law was supposed to ensure prosperity for indigenous people as a result of local resource extraction, but it also increased inequality and created internal tensions in the country because it made a difference between people and areas. Some got access to stocks and high incomes, and others got nothing. In addition, much of the money simply went to bigger cars and houses, and not to the small communities that were falling into decay.

It is during this difficult period that Lisa Murkowski grew up in Alaska. That is what she has with her as a politician.

Thinking and extremely talented

Aaja Chemnitz has known Lisa Murkowski for more than 10 years.

They both sit on the Cooperation Committee of Arctic Parliamentarians. Aaja Chemnitz has been the chair since 2021 and Lisa Murkowski the vice chair. It is clear that the two have great respect for each other.

– She is very thoughtful and weighs her words carefully. She is “soft spoken” – just like I am. At the same time, she is extremely skilled, and good at moving across the middle in politics and entering into partnerships without compromising her Republican ideologies. And in relation to Greenland, she has been very clear right from the start, and has spoken critically about President Trump’s desire for takeover and control of Greenland. She has also openly encouraged her party colleagues to follow that line, says Aaja Chemnitz.

Although Lisa Murkowski is not of Inuit origin, according to Aaja Chemnitz she has a great understanding of the rights and views of indigenous people.

– She has offices in both Washington and Anchorage, and she has employees distributed in several of the small communities in Alaska. She does this because she wants to keep up with what is going on and how people are feeling.

Challenged by Trump supporter

Prior to the latest election in Alaska in 2022, there was great opposition in the Republican party against Lisa Murkowski because the year before, as one of seven Republican senators, she had voted for Trump to be convicted in the impeachment trial for the storming of Congress.

However, the Trump-supporting challenger Kelly Tshibaka could not beat Murkowski, who also received support from Senate leader Mitch McConnell, among others. The result was that Lisa Murkowski won, and since senators are elected for six years at a time, she is firmly in the seat until 2028.

– Trump can’t touch her, and I think that’s because her power is greater. She has a different freedom to speak compared to some of the other senators facing a midterm election, says Aaja Chemnitz, who also notes that Lisa Murkowski reacted very sharply when Trump said on his first day in office in 2025 that he would rename Mount Denali in Alaska to Mount McKinley.

Lisa Murkowski subsequently introduced a bill that the mountain should be called “Denali,” which is the name given to it by the native people of Alaska; the Koyukon Athabascans.

Murkowski is being listened to

Lisa Murkowski speaks with great weight on the issue of Greenland because she comes from Alaska, says Niels Bjerre-Poulsen.

– She is one of the few Republicans who dares to speak out against the American president. At the same time, she also expresses the fear that exists in the party in relation to criticizing the president, which is problematic, since the role of Congress is precisely to be a control body for the sitting president, regardless of whether you are a Republican or a Democrat.

Niels Bjerre-Poulsen recalls how Lisa Murkowski already back at the Senate hearing in March 2025 provided an alternative view on the Greenland issue, which was listened to.

– Murkowski said, among other things, that the USA did not have the Arctic capacities such as icebreakers to ensure security in the Arctic, and that the USA already had minerals in Alaska that could just be exploited. In other words, she thought that it was an incredibly bad idea to talk about taking over Greenland.

Power in Congress

According to Niels Bjerre-Poulsen, Murkowski is certainly not irrelevant in Congress. She has previously worked closely with Trump, and has known the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio for many years.

– You may think she is annoying in relation to the Greenland issue, but she has definitely had something to say, and she is not alone. She gathered 11 senators who traveled with her to Denmark in January, and now she has taken three senators with her to Greenland. She has repeatedly said that Congress has power over a sitting president. At the same time, she has the population with her. Threats against Greenland are not popular, not even among MAGA supporters, says Niels Bjerre-Poulsen.

Three tracks in the Greenland issue

Aaja Chemnitz is also convinced that Lisa Murkowski's extensive knowledge of Arctic conditions and her clear positions are important for how the case about Greenland develops.

– There are three tracks, as I see it. One is in the working group, the second in NATO and the third track is among American politicians and the American population. There is a great lack of knowledge in the US about the Arctic and Greenland, and here I see Lisa Murkowski as the one who both leads the way as a Republican and who can also cross the middle to the Democrats. In addition, she speaks to the MAGA movement and to prominent members of the US administration. She has access to Trump, even though she has opposed him several times. It is an incredibly important work that she is doing, says Aaja Chemnitz.