Graugaard, Naja Dyrendom, & Høgfeldt, Amalie Ambrosius. The silenced genocide: Why the Danish intrauterine device (IUD) enforcement in Kalaallit Nunaat calls for an intersectional decolonial analysis. Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, 35(2), 2023, 162–167.
From introduction:
In 2022, it was publicly revealed that Danish authorities have initiated and performed coercive insertions of intrauterine devices (IUDs) in Kalaallit women and adolescents, beginning in the 1960s. This has brought forth public and political calls to action, and an offi cial Danish-Greenlandic commission has been established to investigate this hitherto silenced history (Naalakkersuisut 2023).As feminist scholars of postcolonial and de-colonial studies (one of us Danish/Kalaaleq, one of us non-Kalaaleq), we urge the forthcoming investigations to considerthe colonial, racial, and gendered mechanisms of the IUD enforcement prac-tice, and the narratives around it. We hold that apt analysis of Danish IUD coercion and campaigning, its past workings and present consequences, requires specific attention towards how different modes of power and oppression intersect in Danish colonial strategies in Kalaallit Nunaat. While the gendered and racial dynamics of Danish colo-nization is seldomly analyzed (Loftsdó ttir & Jensen 2012;Petterson 2012; 2014; Andersen, Hvenegård-Lassen & Knobblock 2015; Ambrosius 2020; 2022), we argue that the history (and presence) of reproductive control of Kalaallit indeed points to the intimate relations between colonialism, racism, and patriarchy in Danish colonial practices.