The children of Greenland suffer and die from educational malnutrition

Picture by Victor Cerutti

Lisbeth: I just watched a video in which an ex Wall Street banker told his story about being addicted to wealth in the hope of avoiding fear and how he had turned this into something more useful – by helping people and indeed children, through educating them about non-toxic and good nutrition.

That is so important. But  so is what we put into our heads, hearts and brains. Malnutrition in the educational system is fatal and it becomes evident for a people and children who are forced through a very rapid change from a thousand year old indigenous culture into “modern” society a la Western World style: The Inuit/Eskimos of Greenland.

Even though their children are living in one of the cleanest and most pristine places on the planet and from the best food you can imagine, in one of the richest kingdoms in the World, Denmark, staggering statistics show that:

5,000 children in Greenland are suffering – out of the indiginous population of 46.000 people. Further 10.000 Danes live and work in Greenland
One third of the children never finish primary school and half drop out of higher educations.
The suicide rate in Greenland holds a sad world record – many of these are adolescents.
Violence amongst these normally peaceful people is soaring.

Denmark turned Greenland into a colony about 300 years ago, and for the past 60 years the peaceful Inuit and Eskimos have gone through a very fast development to become a self governing – that is good – and “modern” society.

Under Danish rule and with the best of intentions, the Inuit/Eskimo people have been “motivated” to move from the small villages as fishermen and hunters – their living spaces for more than at thousand years – to bigger cities on this huge 2,700 km long and 1,500 km wide ice covered island, into modern apartments sponsored by Denmark. They did not match the cultural values and the inuit/eskimo way of life very well.

They further were given alcohol to remedy the pain – which their bodies genetically cannot tolerate. Many has died.

Today they are doing amazingly good – the alcohol consumption is less than in Denmark, but the pain is there.

They have been given the Danish educational system – with all the best of intentions – which makes little sense for a nature child born in Greenland. Their books and literature is predominantly Danish, referring to a country and culture that is alien for them.

They are supposed to sit in a room learning by listening – while coming from a culture where you learn through oral traditions, by observing and actively doing, most of the time being out in and communicating with nature.

So there is a clash of cultures inside their heads and souls.

“The system” including the young government of Greenland has till now failed to remedy the situation, even though they try, but again the Danish way by for example wanting to test the children more – from the age of 9 months to prepare them for education.

They fail to listen to the the real experts: The children and adolescents, who are giving an important and very serious feedback. They say no thanks to the life and education offered to them, and in which their amazing original culture holds less and less space.

Their cultural roots are being amputated and they are confused and too many chose to leave the world.

It is time we start listening, very carefully. For theirs and our sake. They are the canaries in the mines and they are dying.

They give important feed back to the western cultures. Even though we believe we have gotten used to the hieratical system over a much larger span of years with all its competition and focus on economy, soaring stress rates – which is acknowledged to be the cause of most diseases – show that we may benefit from pausing and start pondering:

What we are doing to our selves and each other?
And which sort of society do we really wish to be a part of?

Qisuk and I want to help the children of Greenland.

We want to start and fund a project in which a group of people with the proper understanding, skills, heart and finances will gather and use the feedback from these amazing people and importantly their 5,000 children and young who suffer unnecessary and who needs help here and now.

The existing system does not hold the solutions – so we need to find them.

We wish to learn from a people who still remembers how it is being human – Inuit means human being – and being connected to spirit and nature.

We wish to co-create with them social structures that we will enjoy and educational systems that suits human beings of today.

They already have social structures and a traditional educational system that is much more human shaped that those mostly used in the Western World, where an increasing number of students are severely stressed – more thatn 50% on universities in Denmark –  and where WHO predicts that depression will be the number one cause of death in a few years. But they are being boooed out of existence claimed to be primitive.

We wish naturally to bring together the best of all worlds.

And we wish to learn something from them that may even bring healing to the fearful bankers in places like Wall Street.

The indigenous people of Greenland know how to abolish fear.
Their hunters know how to do this and Qisuk and I have modelled part of their amazing skills so that we can share it with others. We call it The Wordless Universe – an inner place of peace and at the same time focus, a state out of time and with no fear.

That in itself can make huge changes for many, privately, in schools and in the public and the corporate world. What a gift for the world. Everybody should have a set of keys.

We do appreciate that the people in Greenland share destiny with many other indigenous people. Sadly their story is not unique. We hear similar stories from the whole of the Inuit/Eskimo world (Canada, Alaska, Siberia, Greenland, Lapland) as well as American Indians, Australian Aboriginals, tribes in South America and Africa etc. etc.

Our goal is to use Greenland as a model and then to offer the results to other people in the world.

But we got to start one place. The advantage of Greenland is that it’s one of the few places where the indigenous people are 80% of the population and that they are self governing.  And Qisuk knows it inside out, and so it is a good vantage point.

We dream about getting a lot of help to create and fund this project – and so if you have ideas, connections, passion, access to funding and a desire to learn, please contact us.

We are looking forward to hearing from you.

Lisbeth Nielsson and Pórto Qisuk
LNielsson@gmail.com
Qisukshaman@gmail.com
skype: lisbethnielsson
skype: qisuk56