Pedophilia and an
Ongoing Cultural Clash in Present Day Greenland
-
Especially in Greenland´s Capital Nuuk - formerly called Good Hope
- The Capital of Greenland has now finally been given an indigenous
Inuit name: Nuuk
- Greenland is a former Danish colony, today with extended self rule
The
media in Denmark maintains that up to 30 children in Nuuk have been
sexually abused - in a country that is still part of the Danish Kingdom
despite extended self rule. Two men, one of whom has committed suicide,
are allegedly the sole “perpetrators”.
A Danish national newspaper Politiken has (Sunday the 18th of June 2006) run a series
on these Greenland children and two men. The 19th of June I sent them my
commentary on this issue along with an anthropological illustration of a
Greenland mother and child, plus a nursery song. Here is what I sent the
newspaper:
Pedophilia and Cultural Clash in Nuuk, capital of Greenland
by Troels Peter Schmidt, cultural activist, author and journalist
[The national newspaper]
Politiken wrote the 18th of June 2006:
"In Greenland one person out of every 629 inhabitants is charged with
sexual abuse. In Denmark the eqivalent figure is one out of every 23.348
Danes." The article does not unequvically point to any single cause and
there probably isn´t any such singular explanation. Maybe the cause is
not exclusively to be explained as stemming from poverty and abuse in
general, but has deeper roots and probably can also be seen as a clash of
cultures.
[To see the anthropological sketch I´ve sent the newspaper, you may click
on the following link:
http://www.just-well.dk/groenlan.htm
]
The sketch depicts a mother and a child expressing love in play,
illustrated by the Greenlander Paul-Emile Victor and below, in the nursery
song, with a child being orally caressed by an adult mother. This
could easily be seen by many Danes as an illicit act of incest. Both the
sketch and the song are published in the anthropological work on Greenland
culture: La Civilisation du Phoque. Legendes, rites et croyances des
Eskimo d´Ammasalik. Editions Raymond Chabaud, Bayonne, by Paul-Emile
Victor and Joölle Robert-Lamblin. The work was reviewed in the magazine
Research in Greenland / tusaat 4 / 94 by the Danish scientific book
reviewer, Hans Chr. Gulloev, Dr. of ethnografic science, senior reasercher
at the Danish Polar Center and employed by the Danish National Museums
Etnografic Collection. Dr. Gulloev describes the daily life of the
Greenlanders, as among other things, represented by the sketch above:
"I read the book as a repport bt Paul-Emile Victors Ammassalik and
found that belief in the here and now is very strong and an important
element in the stuggle for survivval. Belief in the here and now embraces
the joy of life, love and caring for the next generation as illustrated in
one of the childrens´ nursery songs by Victor (p. 194 og p. 199):
[The nursery song:]
You are like an old wooden bowl,
Like a simpel wooden bowl,
A wooden bowl one licks,
A wooden bowl one eats from.
The nursery song says in words what we see in the sketch: The illustration
and the song shows how different Greenland culture was and to some extent
still may be, from the Danish, in that an old traditional act as seen in
the drawing and described in the poem is most certainly quite unacceptable
to any sex abuse professionel. Irrespective of whether this culture is
still widespread in Greenland or not it is my opinion that one can, with
some certainty, conclude that this sketch and poem represents a more
relaxed attitude towards sex in Greenland than in Denmark. Therefore, one
may with good reason ask whether the Danish authorities maybe see more
"sex abuse" than actually exists. Does the inherited Danish authoritarian system
itself, in Greenland, contribute more to the dissemination of the problem
than to solving it? Is it possible that this is more a question of
difference in cultures than a question of sex abuse with respect to the
many alleged cases of pedophilia in Greenland? With so many more charges
for sex abuse than in Denmatk? This aspect of the ”problem” is worth
considering.
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The Danish national nrewspaper Politiken did not publish my commentary
above, but instead I´ve posted it here in English and in Danish onto The Danish Journalist Associations
debate forum:
http://www.journalisten.dk
where journalists and many others frequently pay a visit.
|
New
Copenhagen University Research Totally
Rejects Notion of Universal Incest Taboo - Sigmund
Freud & Claude Lévi-Strauss were wrong:
click
here