Greenland’s government has criticised the arrival of a US doctor in Nuuk alongside Donald Trump’s special envoy, Jeff Landry, saying that Greenlanders are not “experimental subjects”.
Joseph Griffin said he had joined the delegation as a volunteer to “assess the medical needs” of the Arctic island, which the US president has repeatedly threatened to invade.
Greenland’s health minister, Anna Wangenheim, immediately condemned his presence, describing it as “deeply problematic”.
“The health sector in Greenland has historically been the subject of geopolitical interest,” she said in a statement hinting at deep sensitivities in the now largely autonomous territory, which as a Danish colony experienced repeated health-related abuses of Indigenous Greenlandic people.
“A society with great distances, a chronic shortage of health professionals and a demographic development that pressures the system makes us vulnerable – and that is precisely why it is deeply problematic when people with a political mission to make Greenland part of the United States send a so-called ‘volunteer doctor’ to Nuuk to ‘assess our needs’.
“Greenlanders are not experimental subjects in a geopolitical project. “Our healthcare system must be developed through respectful cooperation and Greenlandic self-determination, not through political envoys with hidden strategic interests.”
Speaking on Monday after a meeting with Landry, who is also governor of Louisiana, and the US ambassador to Denmark, Kenneth Howery, the Greenlandic prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, also criticised the doctor’s presence.
He said: “If you want to learn about health conditions in Greenland, you have to contact Greenland through the right channels,” he said.
Griffin’s presence in Greenland appears to be the latest US attempt to intervene in the island’s healthcare system after Trump said in February that a hospital ship was “on its way” – an offer refused by Nuuk. The ship never arrived.
The US delegation’s visit comes as talks between the US and Greenland over the territory’s future continue.
Trump’s repeated assertion that the US must acquire or control the island sparked tension between Washington and Copenhagen, both founding Nato members, and more broadly across Europe.
Nielsen said the meeting with Howery and Landry had been “conducted with mutual respect and in a good tone” but that the Greenlandic government had made it clear their land was not for sale.
“We are committed to continuing the dialogue and finding the best solutions for Greenland. We have reiterated that the Greenlandic people are not for sale, and our right to self-determination is not up for discussion,” he said.
The island’s foreign minister, Múte B Egede, said: “We have some red lines. We are not going to sell Greenland. We are going to own Greenland forever.”
Landry and Howery are scheduled to attend a business conference, Future Greenland, on Tuesday and Wednesday, and Howery to inaugurate the new US consulate in Nuuk on Thursday.
Healthcare is a particularly sensitive subject in Greenland after Danish doctors’ past abuses of local people.
Last year Mette Frederiksen, who was then the Danish prime minister and is now acting prime minister amid ongoing coalition talks, issued an official apology to victims of the intrauterine device (IUD) scandal and announced a reconciliation fund.
Thousands of women and girls, some as young as 12, were fitted with IUDs without their knowledge or consent between 1966 and 1970 in an apparent attempt to reduce Greenland’s population.