In December 2002, a senior bureaucrat dabbling in wtchcraft brounght down the Greenland government.
With a population o 56,000 people, Greenland is the world’s largest island. It was formerly under the Danish control, but since 1979, it has achieved a level of semi, self-autonomy from Denmark and elects its own governments.
This move, however, has caused a bit of a rift between the native Greenlanders and the Danish population which sits at about 20%.
In December 2002, the new home-rule government of Greenland had just been elected for 37 days when a senior bureaucrat decided to bring in a healer to cleanse the government offices -- located in Greenland’s capital Nuuk -- of evil spirits.
The healer did not come from a Christian background and was more closely associated with witchcraft and shamanism. The senior bureaucrat told the 600 employees under his control to employ similar tactics to remove the “negative energy” from the buildings. He believed the cleansing would drive out evil spirit and reduce the tension between the Danish and Greenlander populations.
When the event hit the media, the politicians were shocked by what was taking place and called it “witch doctoring.”
The vast majority of Greenland’s 56,000 population belong to the Danish Lutheran church and the Christian community strongly protested the pagan cleansing ritual.
The matter took a significant turn for the worse, when a local Greenland radio station interviewed the “healer’ who said she spent 90 minutes outside the government offices “harnessing her powers,” before moving inside to cleanse the offices. Even the local aboriginal population has no tradition of this type of cleansing.
The issue became so heated, that the newly elected government was forced to step down, making it the shortest running government since Greenland’s move to self-rule in 1979.
The Globe and Mail, January 11, 2003
|
