Greenland

Would U.S. Wildlife Laws Turn Greenland's Hunters Into Criminals?

Greenlandic hunters fear a U.S. takeover because Americans "think whales and seals are cute and shouldn’t be hunted."

Matthew Petti | 4.9.2026 2:24 PM

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(Illustration: Wikimedia Commons/Midjourney)

President Donald Trump is threatening Greenland again. "REMEMBER GREENLAND, THAT BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE!!!" he wrote in a social media rant about European allies' failure to join his war on Iran. Earlier this year, Trump had made such intense threats to annex the island that Denmark, its owner, deployed troops with live ammunition, emergency blood supplies, and orders to blow up the airports in case of a U.S. invasion.

"It is our task to ensure that [Trump's ambitions] are not realized," Denmark's Acting Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen told Danish television in response to a question about Greenland. Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen warned about the threat to "international law" and "the world community." Naaja H. Nathanielsen, a member of Danish parliament for Greenland, denounced the disrespect to Greenlanders' national pride.

But some Greenlanders have a much more mundane concern: If Americans took over, would they let us keep hunting? "I hunt whales and seals," Greenlandic villager Kunuk Abelsen tells The New York Times. "In the United States they think whales and seals are cute and shouldn't be hunted. That's what I'm afraid of."

Most Greenlanders are Inuit, the descendants of hunters who survived off of whales, seals, walruses, polar bears, reindeer, and muskoxen in the frozen northern wasteland. A boy's first seal catch is still a major rite of passage for children in Greenland. It's also a federal........

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