The nonprofit organization, Right to Democracy, is hosting a virtual forum Thursday: “What Greenlanders and Everyone in the United States Should Know About Being a U.S. Territory.”
This event moves beyond recent headlines to provide a substantive experience-based examination of America’s territorial model, its historical context, and its real-world consequences.
The session is particularly urgent following the renewed geopolitical discourse around the United States’ desires to acquire Greenland, citing its vast mineral resources, which are deemed critical for green energy and defense technologies, as well as its strategic Arctic location. This proposal raises profound questions about the self-determination of Greenland’s 56,000 predominantly Indigenous Inuit residents and spotlights the U.S.’s existing territorial framework as a potential blueprint.
The U.S. currently holds five populated, permanently inhabited territories: Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Together, they are home to over 3.5 million U.S. nationals and citizens who lack full political representation in the government that governs them. Right to Democracy’s panel will examine the legal and practical architecture of this relationship, rooted in the Insular Cases, a series of controversial early-20th-century Supreme Court rulings that established the doctrine of “separate and unequal” status for acquired territories.
This virtual event is intentionally scheduled to accommodate time zones across the nation’s territories:
Thursday at 5 p.m. EST/6 p.m. AST (Puerto Rico, USVI)/11 a.m. SST (American Samoa)
Friday at 8 a.m. ChST (Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands)
There will also be live Spanish interpretation, reflecting the linguistic diversity of the territorial populations.
This session is an opportunity for anyone seeking to understand the full landscape of American power, governance, and the unfinished business of its democracy.
To register for this event, visit https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_gGZYVaw3R_iFSpgkf2SEMw#/registration
