'How we use our nature.' Sustainability and indigineity in Greenlandic discourse.

In the network of signs and symbols that add meaning to the concept of sustainability, indigeneity entails a significant denominator. Indigenous peoples are expected to build their community on values derived from ‘indigenous knowledge’, different from Western standards. However, the debate about nature preservation has a long history in Greenland, which has made the connection between indigeneity and sustainability a lot more complex and contested. The chapter looks into this history in order to better understand the complicated situation of today, where non-Western ontology plays a minor role in Greenlandic environmental politics. First, a section juxtaposes the difficulties of translating the concept of sustainability into the Greenlandic language with the efforts made to claim it as Greenlandic, and a section revisits the literature on the relation between man and nature in pre-colonial and colonial discourses. Then a section analyses the way knowledge and authority were negotiated in debates on progress and conservation as they unfolded in the Greenlandic press in the early twentieth century, a period crucially reconfiguring life and identities. Finally, a section explicates how local – rather than indigenous – knowledge is presented as that which makes colonialism unsustainable, and how local knowledge is later ‘nationalized’. In sum, a brief conclusion finds that the cultural heritage from the Inuit past is central to many Greenlanders’ self-identification, as well as to Greenland’s brand as a nation. However, the negotiated in debates on progress and conservation as they unfolded in the Greenlandic press in the early twentieth century, a period crucially reconfiguring life and identities. Finally, a section explicates how local – rather than indigenous – knowledge is presented as that which makes colonialism unsustainable, and how local knowledge is later ‘nationalized’. In sum, a brief conclusion finds that the cultural heritage from the Inuit past is central to many Greenlanders’ self-identification, as well as to Greenland’s brand as a nation. However, the approach guiding how the Self-Government works with the sustainability concept affirms modernity and nation, rather than tradition and indigeneity.

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