Greenland's foreign minister takes over as Arctic Council chair

Emma Tranter · CBC News

· Posted: May 14, 2025 5:42 PM EDT | Last Updated: 26 minutes ago

Greenland's overseas curate is the caller seat of the Arctic Council arsenic the Kingdom of Denmark takes implicit the presumption from Norway. 

Vivian Motzfeldt will beryllium seat for the next two years, starring the assembly of 8 Arctic countries and six imperishable participants. 

Speaking astatine a quality league successful Oslo, Norway, on Monday, Motzfeldt said she wants bring the council's enactment person to radical surviving successful the region. 

She besides said she hopes to equilibrium improvement with preservation and protecting Indigenous rights. 

Motzfeldt takes connected the relation astatine a clip when U.S. President Donald Trump has been threatening to instrumentality implicit Greenland, something Greenland has consistently pushed backmost on. 

"I deliberation we person been precise wide successful our politics, that we don't privation to beryllium Danes but we don't privation to beryllium Americans either," Motzfeldt said. 

She said her extremity for the Arctic Council arsenic seat is "a much resilient aboriginal for the Arctic and its peoples." 

 Espen Barth Eide, Norway's curate of overseas affairs and the previous chair of the Arctic Council, said the council remains agreed "despite these geopolitical issues astir us." 

"What happens successful the Arctic does not enactment successful the Arctic," helium said. 

In a statement, Inuit Circumpolar Council president Sandra Olsvig said Motzfeldt's leadership places Indigenous people at the centre of Arctic governance. 

"Recognizing our rights besides means seeking a communal knowing of the past, the challenges of the present, and the mode ahead. We person an inherent close of self-determination, and the fulfilment of our rights astatine each levels of governance is imperative," Olsvig said. 

Motzfeldt says the Kingdom of Denmark's enactment volition person 5 priorities: Indigenous peoples and communities successful the Arctic, sustainable economical improvement and vigor modulation solutions, oceans, Arctic clime alteration and biodiversity.

There are 8 subordinate nations of the Arctic Council: Canada, the Kingdom of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, the Russian Federation, Sweden and the United States. 

Motzfeldt volition enactment connected arsenic seat until 2027.