Indigenous Affairs 3-4/08 64 SELF-RULE IN GREENLAND TOWARDs THE WORLD’s fIRsT InDEPEnDEnT InUIT sTATE?

• Main Author: Mark Nuttall
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Greenland; greenlander*; inuit
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.458.5032; http://www.iwgia.org/iwgia_files_publications_files/IA_3-08_Greenland.pdf

of the electorate of the world’s largest island voted in favour of greater autonomy. Greenlanders, who became the first population of Inuit origin to achieve a degree of self-government when Denmark granted them Home Rule in 1979, have given their political leaders a mandate for significant and far-reaching change. There are many in the Home Rule government who dream that this historic vote will see Greenland move from being a semi-autonomous territory to an independent state within a generation – Greenland’s Premier Hans Enoksen has expressed a desire for in-dependence in 2021, a date marking three hundred years since Danish colonization. The realities of self-rule leave others – particularly those critical that the referendum was too early in Greenland’s recent po-