Little Danes experiment

The little Danes experiment, also known simply as the experiment (Danish: eksperimentet), was a 1951 Danish operation where 22 Greenlandic Inuit children (known as "experiment children"; Danish: eksperimentbørn) were sent to Danish foster families in an attempt to re-educate them as "little Danes".^[1] While the children were all supposed to be orphans, most were not. Six children were adopted while in Denmark, and sixteen returned to Greenland, only to be placed in Danish-speaking orphanages and never live with their families again. Half of the children experienced mental health disturbances, and half of them died in young adulthood. The government of Denmark officially apologised in 2020, after several years of demands from Greenlandic officials.