– This country is not a take-your-own-table

Dear Mr. Trump,

My name is Inger Platou.

Dear Mr. Trump,

My name is Inger Platou.

I am a retired school teacher and now live a quiet life as a freelance translator, writer and artist, with my now-adult adopted children from Colombia. I had to adopt them because I am one of the women who involuntarily had an IUD inserted as a young woman, which made me sterile.

Like all other Greenlanders, I am a child of the colonial era, but I am friends with the Danes, even though their country, Denmark, has been a colonial power. Like many other Greenlanders, I also have Danish family, and we have always had a good relationship with the Danes and Denmark, despite the colonial history.

My ancestors and I have always lived in security and harmony in our country for decades. In our beautiful, safe and peaceful country, where we help each other, support each other and take care of each other - we have never experienced any outsider and stranger making us afraid of what will happen to us tomorrow or in 20 days. But when you interfere in our daily peaceful life, you make us afraid and insecure.

I know that our minerals in Greenland are attractive to you, but they are ours, and you can't just take them. This country is not a take-it-yourself table, even if you have more money than everyone else, that doesn't give you the right to do as you please.

We, Inuit, Greenlanders, have survived a harsh nature for many years, which no other people have been able to do. With our own homemade tools, qajaq, umiaq, dog sleds, sealskin clothing, kamikazes, knives, houses, and what do I know, Inuit survived without help from other strangers from outside! We are a proud people, we have fought for our identity as Inuit, and we have fought to keep our own language and way of life. You should not come and destroy that. We are happy in our own country – Greenland.

I think, like many others in this country, that you should show respect! We do not want to start over as a colonial country. We know what the USA has done to the Inuit in Alaska…

I hope you will listen to us.

But I fear waking up one day to war in Greenland.

Regards Inger Platou, Nuuk, Greenland