Seminar.
How does cryolite challenge historical and present narratives of Danish colonialism in Kalaallit Nunaat? Why are some Kalaallit stories endorsed in Danish public consciousness, and others not? And why is Inuit narrative sovereignty central to decolonial knowledge creation? In her talk, Naja Dyrendom Graugaard reflects on “cryolite colonialism” as both a historical formation and a contemporary epistemic struggle that reveals endurances of coloniality in Danish-Kalaallit relations. Drawing on the history of cryolite extraction in Ivittuut, in southern Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), and the public deplatforming of the film documentary Orsugiak -White Gold of Greenland, I meditate on how extraction operates not only through material dispossession, but also through the regulation of knowledge, authority, and narrative legitimacy.
Naja Dyrendom Graugaard is Associate Professor, Center for Gender, Sexuality & Difference, Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, at Copenhagen University. She is a Danish-Kalaaleq (Inuk) researcher with an expertise in past and present colonial relations between Denmark and Kalaallit Nunaat. Her research attends to decolonial, intersectional, and Indigenous narratives; Kalaallit lived experiences, land relations, and Inuit knowledge systems. She is also a protagonist in the documentary Kalaaallit-Danish documentary film Orsugiak – White Gold of Greenland, curator of the AR walk “Qallunology 101” in Århus, and co-author of the theatre play Inuk Ingerlaartoq that premiered. She is Affiliate scholar at RIFS, Research Institue for Sustainability, GFZ, Potsdam, and she is a recipient of the Emma Goldman Award 2025, as well as Emma Goldman Fellowship.
The seminar is funded by the Department of Media and Social Sciences, UiS, and organized by the Centre for Gender Studies and the research groups Sustainable Urban Development and Design, Social and Spatial Justice, and Feminist Knowledge Production as part of the Just Futures and Green Transitions project.