SHACKLETON MEDAL 2026 // SHORTLIST NOMINEE: IN CONVERSATION WITH SARA OLSVIG
“I took a hike up a mountain to see an abandoned US military installation… It woke me up to how human activities continue to affect nature.”
Much as we’d all like to ignore Trump, he did put Greenland on the front pages this year. Can you talk about the impact it's had on you?
It has had a very tangible impact on our work in the Inuit Circumpolar Council. We have been extremely busy at the office in Nuuk. Next week there’s going to be another rush since we have the US Ambassador to Denmark and the so-called US Special Envoy to Greenland coming over in connection with the big conference Future Greenland. All the international media want to come and talk to us. When Trump came to power, it was very obvious, early on, that we were facing yet another state [besides Russia] whose actions would stifle our cooperation as members of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, which includes Alaska, and also the stability we have across the Arctic.
The Inuit Circumpolar Council was established in 1996 but the Inuit and other Indigenous peoples had been pushing for that to happen since the 1980s. Of course, we needed a formal end to the Cold War to be able to sit together around one table. So actions by the big powers in the Arctic – both Russia and the US – have been of deep concern to us, because it has been stifling the work that we've been building for 50 years as an Inuit organisation. That’s why our response was clear from the beginning. We called for a dignified dialogue and continued cooperation in the Arctic, focusing on the peace and stability that we've been able to uphold in our region, and also on the people to people and cross border cooperation which I think we as Indigenous peoples bring to the table.
Could you talk a bit about other challenges that have faced you in your work?
When Trump pushed to acquire Greenland, I said that there is no such thing as a better coloniser. For us, that was an important thing to state, because we recognise that we still have work to do with Denmark. Among our many files of work, we also tackle human rights, and we've been focusing on the rights of Inuit women and girls and the consequences of some of the state led policies that were specifically targeted towards them. Such as the program where half of the women and girls of childbearing age were fitted with IUDs in the 60s and 70s, effectively preventing our population growth. This is an ongoing issue. [Records from the national archives show that, between 1966 and 1970, 4,500 women and girls, some as young as 13, had an IUD implanted. Last August, PM Mette Frederiksen finally issued a formal apology.]
You’ve overseen really important advances in Indigenous diplomacy. For instance, in early July, the Inuit Circumpolar Council gained permanent consultative status at the International Marine Organization (IMO). You were the first Indigenous people’s organisation to do so. The whole question of shipping routes in the Arctic and melting sea ice is key right now. So it's really significant that you've now got this status.
Yes, that took some footwork. We actually failed to obtain this status the first time that the IMO took a decision two years prior to that. So we had two more years with a provisional consultative status until we were accepted by the IMO Council in 2025. This was a huge achievement. I think we really managed to demonstrate during the four years in which we held the provisional consultative status why we wanted to achieve permanent consultative status.
We took part in very technical meetings under the IMO, to address how we as a collective world society need to rethink how we design ships, how we think about declining sea ice and increased shipping activities, which have gone up 50%, and look not just at emissions as pollution, but also at sound as pollution. We as a people are dependent on both fish and marine mammals, and marine mammals especially are very affected by the increase in sound from ships. We have also been able to address how pollution affects us in terms of our everyday health. Not just the emission of black carbon, but also setting up regulatory regimes to ensure that we don't have bulk water emitted into our Arctic waters, possibly bringing invasive species into our waters.
We want to address such issues through a multi-lateral system, so that we are able to ensure that everyone will abide by the same rules in the Arctic. At the moment we are carrying the heaviest burden despite not having been the ones who have polluted the most.
You are a major figure in Indigenous diplomacy. But when did you as a person first become aware that your environment was under threat and you wanted to do something about it?
Very early on. I grew up in a family of three girls, and I'm the oldest. So I was always taken hunting by my dad. One time I took a hike up a mountain close to Sisimiut on the west coast, to see an abandoned US military installation. There was a Distant Early Warning line in effect around the Cold War [a system of radar stations to detect incoming Soviet Bombers] and I was absolutely appalled to see the state in which this installation had been left. There were still big machines halfway down the lake. Oil and other substances were still leaking from installations that had been left in the beginning of the 90s. It woke me up to how human activities from militarisation – and other areas – continue to affect nature. And later, of course, I learned much more about how the Arctic has become kind of a sink to much of the pollution that comes over a long range.
A good example of how multilateral action can tackle this is the Minamata convention, which has had a positive effect. Not many decades ago, the numbers were saying that, because the Inuit eat a lot of fish and meat contaminated by mercury, we had a high level of mercury in our bodies. But the Minamata Convention [2013] has helped decrease that. That proves to me that multilateral agreements really work.
What is the greatest challenge been that you have overcome in your work?
I feel that it is an achievement that we are actually still united as Inuit. I was extremely heart-warmed by the several statements of support we received in January and February this year when international attention was focused on Greenland because of the US. First and foremost Marie Green, our Vice Chair and President of the ICC Alaska, gave a very strong video speech that was shown at the big protest in Denmark where 15,000 or more people were on the streets. We also received a letter of very strong support from our fellow Inuit in Chukotka, and also from the Inuit in Canada, who chartered a plane arriving in Nuuk as the Canadian government were reasserting their diplomatic presence here.
