How a failed social experiment in Denmark separated Inuit children from their families

Editor’s observe: This story is a part of CNN’s dedication to overlaying points round id, together with race, gender, sexuality, faith, class and caste.

Seven-year-old Helene Thiesen peered out from aboard the passenger ship MS Disko, realizing she was setting sail from Greenland to a spot referred to as Denmark. What she couldn’t perceive is why her mom had chosen to ship her away on that sad day in 1951.

“I used to be so unhappy,” Thiesen, now 77 years outdated, recalled to CNN. Inflexible with sorrow, Thiesen was unable to wave again to her mom and two siblings, who had been watching from the harbor off the coast of the Greenland capital, Nuuk. “I appeared into (my mom’s) eyes and thought, why was she letting me go?”

Thiesen was certainly one of 22 Inuit youngsters who had been taken from their properties not realizing that they’d find yourself being a part of a failed social experiment. Aged between 5 and 9 years outdated, lots of them would by no means see or dwell with their households once more, turning into forgotten about and marginalized of their place of origin.

On the time, Greenland was a Danish colony, and Greenlanders had been affected by excessive ranges of poverty, low high quality of life and excessive charges of mortality, mentioned Einar Lund Jensen, a mission researcher on the Nationwide Museum of Denmark.

Denmark’s purpose was “to create little Danes who would grow to be the intelligentsia; position fashions for Greenland,” mentioned Jensen, who co-authored a current government-commissioned report investigating the experiment.

The Danish authorities felt compelled to modernize the arctic colony, hoping to carry onto their pursuits as post-war decolonization actions swept by means of the globe. They took up an concept from human rights group Save the Kids Denmark of bringing Inuit youngsters to the nation to be able to get well from what had been perceived as their dangerous dwelling situations, he mentioned.

The belief at the moment was “Danish society is superior to Greenlandic society,” he added.

After a 12 months and a half in Denmark, many of the youngsters had been returned to Greenland to dwell in an orphanage run by one other charity, the Danish Pink Cross, in Nuuk — separated from Greenlanders and their households and banned from talking their mom tongue. CNN has reached out to the Danish Pink Cross for remark.

Seen as strangers by Greenlanders, most of the youngsters returned to Denmark once they turned adults. As much as half of the group developed psychological sickness or substance abuse issues in later life, Jensen mentioned. Many had been unemployed and led arduous lives, Thiesen mentioned.

The Danish authorities “took our id and household from us,” Kristine Heinesen, 76, who, together with Thiesen, is likely one of the six Greenlandic social experiment survivors alive as we speak. Strolling in a cemetery in Copenhagen the place a few of her buddies from the experiment at the moment are buried, Heinesen admits her life has been respectable since her days within the orphanage. “However I do know most of the different youngsters suffered extra rising up, and I feel as a result of we’re solely six left of twenty-two — that tells the story very effectively,” she mentioned, wrapped in a Greenlandic fur-lined coat.

Save the Kids apologized in 2015 for the half they performed within the social experiment. The Danish authorities issued an apology 5 years later, after strain from marketing campaign teams, however has refused to compensate those that are nonetheless alive, mentioned the lawyer of the victims, Mads Krøger Pramming. He filed a compensation declare of 250,000 kroner ($38,000) every in Copenhagen’s district courtroom in late December 2021.

The six accuse the Danish state of appearing “in violation of present Danish regulation and human rights, together with the plaintiffs’ proper to personal and household life underneath Article 8 of the European Conference on Human Rights (ECHR),” reads their claim.

In a press release to CNN, Denmark’s Minister of Social Affairs and the Aged mentioned the federal government was wanting into the compensation declare.

“Crucial facet for the Danish Authorities has been an official apology to the now grownup youngsters and their households for the betrayal they endured. This was a significant step in direction of redressing the Authorities’s failure; a duty no earlier authorities had taken on,” Astrid Krag mentioned.

“The federal government and I consider that recognizing the errors of the previous is in itself essential, and we should be taught from these in order that historical past is rarely permitted to repeat itself.”

The listening to is prone to occur within the subsequent 10 months and “it’s nonetheless our hope, that the federal government will settle the case and pay compensation earlier than the listening to,” Pramming mentioned.

After all of the six victims have been by means of, “they do not assume an apology is sufficient,” he added.

The purpose of the experiment, which was greenlit in 1950, was to recruit orphans, however it was arduous to seek out sufficient youngsters, mentioned researcher Jensen. The parameters had been broadened to incorporate motherless or fatherless households and 22 youngsters had been chosen, although lots of them had been dwelling with their prolonged households or one mother or father, he added.

Thiesen’s mom, who was widowed, initially dismissed the request of two Danes to take her younger daughter to Denmark, Thiesen instructed CNN. However she finally agreed on the promise that Thiesen would get a greater training.

As colonizers, Danes, who helped establish the youngsters for the experiment, held authority in Greenland, Jensen defined.

It could have been arduous for a Greenlander to refuse them on the time, Karla Jessen Williamson, a Greenlandic assistant professor on the College of Saskatchewan and member of the Greenland Reconciliation Fee, instructed CNN.

“As with every colonized nation, the authorities (had been) revered and feared; rebutting these authorities can’t be accomplished,” she mentioned.

In accordance with the report Jensen co-authored on the experiment, there have been doubts as as to whether among the dad and mom had been totally knowledgeable or understood what they had been agreeing to.

In some ways, what occurred to the youngsters represents the devastating and deliberate results of cultural eradication throughout colonialism, mentioned Williamson. “In colonial instances, there was an eradication of the distinctiveness of tradition, of the connection with the land, the vary of languages, spirituality — and these would have been accomplished away with in order that (the colonized) will be socialized into turning into a part of the colonial state,” she mentioned.

On arriving to Denmark, the youngsters had been housed in Fedgaarden, Save the Kids’s vacation camp on the southern Feddet peninsular, for 4 months. The kids had been banned from talking Greenlandic — a dialect of the Inuit language — and had been as a substitute taught Danish.

The kids had been each terrified and amazed by their new environment. Heinesen was solely 5 years outdated on the time and clearly remembers “all of the bushes — we don’t have any bushes in Greenland, so I keep in mind how tall and large they had been.”

They had been later positioned with separate foster households for round a 12 months. Thiesen didn’t really feel welcome within the residence of her first foster household. She needed to put on an ointment for her eczema and was not allowed to take a seat on the furnishings. “I used to be homesick on daily basis,” she mentioned.

Her second foster household had been kinder, shopping for her a bicycle and doll, and treating her as a part of the household.

When it was time to return to Greenland, six of the Inuit youngsters remained in Denmark and had been adopted by their foster households. The adoptions had been “utterly towards the entire concept of coming again (to Greenland) and turning into the mental elite,” mentioned historian Jensen. “In my view, it was a mistake,” he mentioned.

They returned to Greenland in October 1952 and had been positioned in an orphanage run by the Danish Pink Cross in Nuuk. In accordance with the authorized declare, custody of the youngsters was transferred to the headmistress of the orphanage.

Thiesen remembers seeing her household ready for her by the marina in Nuuk. “I dropped my suitcase and ran to them, telling them every part I noticed. However my mom didn’t reply me,” Thiesen mentioned. It was as a result of she was talking Danish and her mom spoke the Inuit dialect of Greenlandic — a language Thiesen had misplaced the power to grasp.

Their reunion lasted 10 minutes. A Danish nurse taking care of the youngsters instructed her to let go of her mom as a result of she now lived in an orphanage, Thiesen instructed CNN. “I cried all the way in which to the orphanage — I used to be so wanting ahead to see my city however I couldn’t see something by means of my tears.”

The orphanage was the place 16 of the youngsters lived. They had been solely allowed to talk Danish, had been put in a Danish-speaking faculty, and phone with their households was restricted or non-existent. Nobody instructed Heinesen that her organic mom died quickly after Heinesen joined the orphanage, in accordance with the authorized declare.

Emphasis was positioned on retaining in contact with the foster households, mentioned Jensen. Thiesen’s mom was solely allowed to go to her daughter a few instances through the seven years Thiesen was there, the authorized declare states.

It was psychologically traumatic “for these children to be separated like that from Greenlandic society and their dad and mom,” Jensen mentioned. “Even those that (had household in Nuuk) mentioned they weren’t allowed to go to their household. Typically the orphanage invited the household to espresso on Sundays, however the youngsters had been by no means given a good likelihood to contact their households.”

They had been enrolled in a Danish faculty and had been restricted from enjoying or interacting with Greenlandic youngsters within the city. The one folks the youngsters had been allowed to socialize with had been distinguished Danish households who lived in Nuuk, survivor Heinesen mentioned.

Greenlanders started to think about the youngsters as outsiders. Gabriel Schmidt, 76, one of many six from the social experiment who now lives in Denmark, instructed CNN that Greenlandic youngsters in Nuuk would say: “You don’t know Greenlandic, you’re not Greenlandic,” and throw rocks at them. “However most of what they mentioned I didn’t perceive as I had misplaced my language in Denmark,” he mentioned from his residence.

Greenland was totally built-in into Denmark in 1953 and in 1979 it was granted residence rule. In that interval, Jensen mentioned, Danish and Greenlandic authorities misplaced curiosity within the social experiment as Greenland’s infrastructure tasks, enterprise sector, and healthcare reforms took heart stage.

By 1960, all the youngsters had left the orphanage, and finally nearly all of them moved again to Denmark. For the six who’re nonetheless alive, they are saying discovering their sense of id has taken a lifetime.

Schmidt returned to Denmark to dwell along with his foster mom, the place he finally received a job as a solider within the Danish military. Talking from his tidy residence in Copenhagen, Schmidt mentioned the military gave him a calling. “It actually saved me. It gave me construction, buddies and a goal for my life, and in lots of ways in which time was one of the best of my life.”

Thiesen struggled to attach or forgive her mom, indignant together with her choice to ship her away. “I believed my mom didn’t need me and it’s why I used to be indignant together with her for many of my life,” she mentioned.

It was solely in 1996, when Thiesen was 46 years outdated, when she found the reality. The late Danish radio persona and author Tine Bryld referred to as Thiesen’s residence with some devastating information. “She instructed me, ‘are you sitting down? I discovered one thing in Copenhagen, you will have been a part of an experiment,’” Thiesen mentioned. “I fell to the bottom and cried. It was the primary time I had been instructed of this and it was so terrible,” she added.

“I felt unhappy once I discovered the reality,” Heinesen, who moved to Denmark within the Nineteen Sixties and have become a seamstress, instructed CNN. “You simply don’t experiment with youngsters — it’s simply incorrect.” In 1993, she put an advert within the native paper in Greenland that she was coming to go to and was in search of dwelling family members. “It was an excellent second to be again and to go to — (it was) very emotional for all of us,” she mentioned.

Thiesen has spent a part of her grownup life attempting to reconnect with Greenland and her folks. Her residence in Stensved, a small city an hour and a half away from Copenhagen, is a testomony to that try.

Sat at a eating desk in entrance of a sideboard coated with snow white-colored tupilaq carvings, mythic Greenlandic Inuit figures meant to guard their homeowners from any hurt, Thiesen instructed CNN that studying Greenlandic and writing her memoir has been a part of her therapeutic course of.

It was facilitated by her second husband, Jens Møller, who’s Greenlandic. Thiesen mentioned he “gave me the largest present … to be taught the Greenlandic language, but additionally he taught me fishing, searching and all these issues I had by no means accomplished as a toddler, however that are key components of the Greenlandic tradition.”

It has not wiped away the large injury created by the social experiment however has, in some methods, helped her reconcile the ache that started aboard MS Disko in 1951. No less than now she understands why her mom despatched her away.