Karla Jessen Williamson, an Inuk professor and researcher from Greenland, in her office at the University of Saskatchewan’s Education Building. She is known for her work on Indigenous knowledge, Arctic policy, and decolonization, bringing a personal and scholarly perspective to discussions about identity and current threats to Greenland’s sovereignty. Photo by Michelle Berg /Saskatoon StarPhoenixArticle content
Each time Inuk education professor Karla Jessen Williamson prepares a course for students at the University of Saskatchewan, she ensures she can also deliver her lectures in her first language, Inuktitut.
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“I make absolutely certain that I can actually express that in my own language,” said the 72-year-old, who grew up in Greenland as one of nine children in a tight-knit family.
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“So that, should one of my grandmothers all of a sudden appear to me, I have to be able to deliberate in my own language as to what I’m doing,” she explained.
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Her office has a muted, warm red accent wall, a matching armchair and several personal items, including a pair of tiny sealskin boots made by her mother.
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Karla Jessen Williamson holds a family photograph in her office at the U of S Education Building. (L to R) Jessen Williamson’s paternal aunt, father, two sisters, mother, herself and her paternal grandmother while preparing for Christmas. Jessen Williamson’s family was displaced due to Denmark’s forced assimilation policies. Photo by Michelle Berg /Saskatoon StarPhoenixArticle content
Along with teaching from a decolonial lens, Jessen Williamson has spent many years deeply involved in Inuit sovereignty (with an impressive list of past policy positions documented on her Wikipedia page, including serving on Greenland’s Commission for Reconciliation).
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So, when she first heard about U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent threats to take control of her homeland, she was “very troubled by this very immediate and very urgent message,” she said.
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As Greenland has worked to negotiate self-governance with Denmark, Jessen Williamson says there has been a sense of recent progress. That comes despite a history of Denmark imposing forced assimilation policies on the Inuit population, who now make up nearly 90 per cent of the approximately 57,000 people.
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“In my thinking, we were just about there, and bang, comes Trump’s assertion that he wants to take over,” said the scholar who has contributed to work on possible constitutional paths toward Greenland’s self-governance.
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For her siblings still living in Greenland and Denmark, she says the news has brought a sense of “shock” and “desperation.”
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“Anxiety, desperation, not sleeping properly, not breathing properly, and not being able to cope with the stress associated with that. These are the things that I’ve heard,” she said.
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A journey to Saskatchewan to cultivate ‘independent thought’
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Due to Danish forced assimilation, Jessen Williamson’s family was displaced from her birthplace of Appamiut to Maniitsoq, Greenland. Eager to attend university, Jessen Williamson went to high school in Denmark, where she lived with Danish families away from her culture and language.
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Karla Jessen Williamson holds a pair of sealskin boots made by her mother, who was a good seamstress. In the face of threats to Greenland’s sovereignty, Jessen Williamson says her work aims to make the Inuit worldview understandable to the academic community, so it can be drawn on for solutions. Photo by Michelle Berg /Saskatoon StarPhoenixArticle content
She then returned to Greenland to pursue teacher training, but was soon searching for a destination to attend a “proper university.”