2008 Rediscovery Tour
28 May 2008, Day 24 - Ilulisat, 8 km (1965)
On May 27 Ambassador Cain included Greenland in the ReDiscovery Tour. Check back to these pages to see photos from that day.
Ambassador Cain's remarks
The ReDiscovery Tour arrived in Ilulissat, Greenland on
Wednesday May 28. This is my sixth or seventh trip to
Greenland, and this one coincides with the Artic
Conference being hosted by the Danish Foreign Minister
Per Stig Møller and the Greenland Premier Hans Enoksen.
This was a historic gathering of global leaders at the
“Top of the World”, and included our Deputy Secretary
of State John Negroponte and the Foreign Ministers from
Canada, Russia and Norway, the other countries with
territory bordering the North Pole.
On Wednesday morning I left to start the Tour from the
beautiful Arctic Hotel, which sits on a rocky cliff
above the pastel-picturesque town of Ilulisat overlooking
the Disko Bay. The Disko Bay is one of the most
spectatular sights in the world, with thousands of
blue-white icebergs, some as small as cars, some as large
as office buildings, slowly making their way from the
Jacobshavn Glacier, from which they calved, into the open
North Atlantic. Some of my most stirring memories of our
time in Denmark are from this spectacular setting,
including visits with Senator John McCain and a
delegation of Senate leaders in 2006, and with Speaker
of the House Nancy Pelosi, and a delegation of House
leaders in 2007. I headed to the town’s conference
center, the site of the multilateral talks, where I
was greeted by a 18 smiling Inuit children on bikes,
ages 6 to 18, and all of the local media, eagerly awaiting
the commencement of the Tour so that they could show me
their town. Thanks to my friend Jacob, who has been a
great tour guide and facilitator on all of our trips to
Greenland, I had a rugged mountain bike that was perfect
for the hilly terrain and the rocky, often-unpaved, roads
of the town. Along with Danish Deputy Foreign Minister
Peter Taksø Jensen, we biked about 8 km up and down
hills to the scenic overlook above the Glacier. I tried
my best to visit with the young people, most of whom did
not speak English, so we stopped along the way after a
steep hill climb, amidst the howling packs of sled dogs
and pups, to talk about the Tour and why I was there in
Greenland. We were able to communicate with the help of
their teacher who would translate from their native
Greenlandic into Danish for Jacob, one of my bodyguards,
who would then translate for me into English (not
generally in the bodyguard’s job description but it was
greatly appreciated.) The kids were all eager and curious,
and when I asked about “America”, one young man raised
his hand. I presumed for recognition, but his teacher,
translating, said he was raising his arm with a cupped
hand, as though holding a torch, to show the “Statue of
Liberty”. When I asked why, she spoke to him in
Greenlandic and he replied “freedom, which we have thanks
to you.” Even here at the top of the world, one of the
most remote places on earth, the young people have
memories of the Second World War and the Cold War,
and the threat that fascism and communism created for
their way of life. Given all of the harsh criticism America
has endured in recent years, it was really comforting to
know that even here, people have not forgotten the good
that America has done, and is continuing to do, in remote
spots around the world.
The Tour in Ilulissat was not the longest of our rides,
but it was one of the most emotional, as I saw the wide-eyed
excitement in the faces of the young people when I passed out
the souvenir ReDiscovery Tour coins back at the conference
center. The photograph of the enthusiastic young people,
with the flags of the Arctic Nations flying proudly behind us,
is one of my favorite from the Tour. We had to send the kids
on off to school and clear the parking lot as the formal
negotiating session for the Arctic Confernece was just about
to begin and I had to run back to the Arctic Hotel, shower and
change for it.
The Arctic Conference was a great success, with the leaders of
the nations assembled agreeing, as one journalist said, to
"end the race for the pole". The leaders essentially agreed
that existing International law, including the law of the
Sea Treaty which the US has not ratified, would provide the
mechanism for resolving competing claims to navigation rights,
mineral rights, etc, which are all becoming more important as
the sea ice begins to melt here in the far reaches of the north.