Greenlanders ‘don’t want to be Americans’, say political leaders amid Trump threats

Greenlanders “don’t want to be Americans” and must decide the future of the Arctic island themselves, politicians in the self-governing Danish territory have said, after Donald Trump warned the US would “do something whether they like it or not”.The leaders of five political parties in the Greenlandic parliament issued a united statement on Friday night, soon after the US president reiterated his threats to acquire the mineral-rich island.“We don’t want to be Americans, we don’t want to be Danish, we want to be Greenlanders,” said the group, which included the island’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen. “The future of Greenland must be decided by Greenlanders.”Stressing the desire of the people of Greenland, a former Danish colony, to have self-determination, they said: “No other country can meddle in this. We must decide our country’s future ourselves – without pressure to make a hasty decision, without procrastination, and without interference from other countries.”The statement was signed by Nielsen, his predecessor as prime minister, Múte B Egede, and Pele Broberg, Aleqa Hammond and Aqqalu C Jerimiassen.At a meeting with oil and gas executives at the White House earlier on Friday, Trump had said Greenland was crucial for US national security. “We’re not going to have Russia or China occupy Greenland. That’s what they’re going to do if we don’t. So we’re going to be doing something with Greenland, either the nice way or the more difficult way,” he told reporters.Trump is “actively” discussing making a potential offer to buy the island with his national security team, the White House confirmed earlier this week.Greenlanders have repeatedly expressed their refusal to be part of the US, with 85% of the population rejecting the idea, according to a 2025 poll.Polling also shows only 7% of Americans support the idea of a US military invasion of the territory, which the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, recently said would mean the end of “NATO and therefore post second world war security”.She has urged Trump to stop threatening to take over the country, saying the US has “no right to annex any of the three countries in the Danish kingdom [meaning Denmark, Greenland and the Faroe Islands]”.Trump said on Friday: “If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have a NATO right now.” When asked whether his priority was preserving the alliance or acquiring Greenland, he previously told the New York Times: “It may be a choice.”Asked about Trump’s statement, the head of NATO’s forces in Europe, US Gen Alexus Grynkewich, said he did not wish to comment on whether the alliance – which includes Denmark – would survive without the US.But he responded on Friday by saying NATO was far from being in a crisis.“There’s been no impact on my work at the military level up to this point … I would just say that we’re ready to defend every inch of alliance territory still today,” he said.“So I see us as far from being in a crisis right now,.”The US has operated a military base on the northwestern tip of Greenland since the second world war, where more than 100 military personnel are permanently stationed. Existing agreements with Denmark would allow Trump to bring as many troops as he wanted to the island.But Trump told reporters on Friday that a lease agreement was not enough. “Countries have to have ownership and you defend ownership, you don’t defend leases,” he said. “And we’ll have to defend Greenland,.”Trump previously made an offer to buy the island in 2019, but was told it was not for sale. Since then he has claimed that Greenland, which has vast natural resources including rare-earth minerals and potentially huge oil and gas reserves, “is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place”.In an interview with the Guardian on Friday, Jess Berthelsen, the chair of SIK, Greenland’s national trade union confederation, said people in the territory did not recognise the US president’s allegations that Russian and Chinese ships were scattered throughout its waters. “We can’t see it, we can’t recognise it and we can’t understand it,” he said.