Greenland is not the first territory the US wants from Denmark. Island residents wonder if history will repeat itself.
President Trump halts tariff rollbacks after touting Greenland deal ‘framework’
President Trump said he would postpone imposing tariffs he had threatened on eight European countries over Greenland after agreeing to a framework for a deal with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Traces of 250 years of Danish imperial rule still remain on St. Thomas, St. Croix, St. John, and the smaller islands that now make up the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Cities and road signs have Danish names, such as Frederiksted. The building features yellow-red bricks shipped by ship across the Atlantic Ocean. The stone facades of sugar plantations where enslaved Africans were forced to work still remain.
Evidence of the island’s vibrant Caribbean culture is scattered throughout, from colorfully costumed dancers to drum melodies, and McDonald’s and Home Depot stores reflect its status as an unincorporated territory of the United States for a century.
As President Donald Trump negotiates a “future agreement framework” with Denmark for access to Greenland, some residents of the tropics say they feel like they are revisiting their past.
“History never repeats itself, but it manifests itself in different ways,” says Stephanie Chalana Brown, an Afro-Caribbean visual historian with deep roots in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Ms Brown said her ancestors were among the first people enslaved by Danish colonial powers and she is now part of those working to secure reparations from Denmark.
As a slave and a resident of what became a U.S. territory from Denmark, Brown said her relatives were sold without their consent. A century later, she worries that Greenlanders face the same threat as their ancestors: not having a seat at the table over decisions about the future use of their land.
“I understand that because the same thing happened to my relatives,” Brown said. “I don’t want to see the same thing happen anywhere else.”
Annexation of the Virgin Islands
More than a century ago, President Woodrow Wilson purchased the islands, then known as the Danish West Indies, from Denmark for $25 million after threatening to seize them by force.
At the time, war was raging in Europe and the United States was trying to assert its dominance in Latin America. Mr. Wilson said he wanted the islands for strategic reasons to secure new trade routes and prevent adversaries from dominating the region, using many of the same arguments Mr. Trump has made in contesting control of Greenland.
The country’s rival at the time was not China or Russia, but Germany, the aggressor of World War I. The war heightened fears that Germany would absorb Denmark and its territory and be perceived as a threat to the United States.
After their purchase in 1917, these islands served as a strategic Caribbean outpost and center of naval operations for the U.S. military for several decades. However, the naval air base on the territory was closed in 1948, and the islands never became the important military assets they had once been envisioned.
In 1917, the approximately 26,000 residents of St. John, St. Croix, and St. Thomas had no say in the purchase, but Denmark held a referendum among mainland residents. After this deal, it took more than a decade for Virgin Islanders to obtain U.S. citizenship.
Islanders were given the right to vote for their own governor in 1970. Currently, Virgin Islanders, like residents of other U.S. territories, cannot vote for president and have no voting representatives in Congress.
Virgin Islanders look back at Greenland
Felipe Ayala, a member of the St. Thomas Historical Trust, said he has heard conversations about Trump’s Greenland aspirations, but mostly in his “inner circles.” He said people are paying more attention to international activities happening in their own backyard.
Two Navy aircraft carriers, the USS Gerald R. Ford and the USS Iwo Jima, docked in the U.S. Virgin Islands in December to support the Trump administration’s efforts to disrupt drug trafficking and later capture Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.
These ships marked the first major naval presence on the island in decades. Ayala said some residents welcomed the ships and the crew they brought with them as an economic boost for the island. Others were scared.
“When you step out of your porch, most of the homes overlook the harbor and the bay,” he said. “Seeing the aircraft carrier and learning about the political situation in the area caught me a little bit off guard.”
In the aftermath of the military action in Venezuela, President Trump has stepped up his calls for Greenland to be annexed, and has not ruled out annexing it by military force.
President Trump appeared to back away from some of that rhetoric on January 23, saying the United States would have “full access” to the Arctic island through the deal being negotiated. In the end, he acknowledged that he may not be able to formally acquire Greenland.
President Trump said of U.S. ownership, “Anything is possible. Anything is possible.”
Details of the new agreement remain unclear. So is the role that Greenland’s own parliament is playing in the debate.
For Brown and other Virgin Islanders whose ancestry is tied to Danish colonialism, recent debate over the future of Greenland has heightened their empathy and concern for the 57,000 residents of the 836,000-square-mile island, whose climate is vastly different from their own.
“Is he bringing them to the table to discuss policy?” she asked about President Trump’s plans for a U.S. military presence on the island. “Those things didn’t apply to Virgin Islanders.”
Most Greenlanders are Inuit, an indigenous group that also lives in Alaska and Canada. The Greenlandic language they speak is very different from Danish. And their traditions are different from those of Denmark, Western Europe, and America.
Brown also said she worries that if the U.S. increases its military presence in Greenland, the same Americanization she says is happening in the Virgin Islands could occur on the island.
“You see kids’ identities being washed away when they’re learning about American culture because of things like TV and radio,” she says. “We are losing our Caribbean identity.”
“I hope the same thing doesn’t happen to them,” Brown said of Greenland.
Contributors: Michael Loria, Francesca Chambers, Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY
Carissa Waddick, who covers America’s 50th anniversary for USA TODAY, can be reached at kwaddick@usatoday.com.
