Indigenous Modes of Ownership: Reopening the Case for Communal Rights in Greenland

• Main Author: Tejsner, Pelle
• Other Authors: Pelaudeix, Cecile, Basse, Ellen Margrethe
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 2017
• Subjects: Arctic; Resource Extraction; Indigenous People; Property rights; ideology; institutions; Greenland; inuit
• Online Access: https://pure.au.dk/portal/da/publications/indigenous-modes-of-ownership-reopening-the-case-for-communal-rights-in-greenland(ec213c0b-cbbc-4553-825b-be0a75245b09).html

The current rush in licensing approvals and related public consultation processes concerning on- and offshore oil and mineral operations in Greenland has sparked numerous controversies as concerned citizens are increasingly demanding that their interests be recognized. In light of said developments, it is relevant to assess and appraise the at once historical, but moreover, enduring relationships that continue to grow and inform local Inuit community conceptions of land, coastal and sea tenure. Being located at the uneasy junction between the interests of local communities, oil and mining operators and national authorities, anthropologists in turn, often call attention to the contingencies of given sites by reclaiming specific social and historical contexts, as these relate to previous and contemporary conflicts of interest between local communities and locally witnessed extraction activities. Based on the lessons gained from an appraisal of the historical case evidence relating these, where relevant, to contemporary in-situ fieldwork on locally rooted Inuit conceptions of ownership as collective appropriations of local lands and coastal environments this article discusses some of the cultural differences at work in contemporary encounters between local Inuit stakeholders, multinational oil and mineral operations and the national authorities in Greenland today.