The name change will be marked with a ceremony on Thursday.
– We cannot take back what the residents were exposed to. But today we can honor the Greenlandic language and the history of this region, said Alan Leventhal, the US ambassador to Denmark, during the inauguration.
Forced displacement
The base was built in the early 1950s following an agreement between the US and Denmark, and was supposed to facilitate US strategic bombing.
In connection with the expansion of the base a couple of years later, roughly thirty Inuit families were quickly moved 13 miles north. The Danish Department of Greenland claimed that they moved voluntarily, and it took 30 years before the decision began to be challenged legally.
Received lower compensation
In the mid-1990s, a state commission came to the conclusion that there had been no forced displacement, but a lengthy legal process was launched anyway.
Finally, the case reached Denmark’s highest court, which decided that the Inuit were not allowed to move back to their old places of residence. However, they received compensation, but less than one percent of the 30 million they had demanded.
The base area has room for 7,000 people, an airstrip, radar facilities, hospital and power station.
In 2020, the base was taken over by the newly launched US Space Force.