An abandoned railway line cuts through deep snow and the icy wind rattles the empty window frames of an abandoned fish processing factory in the abandoned village of Qoornoq, perched on the edge of Greenland’s second largest fjord between chunks of glacial ice.
Once a bustling Arctic fishing village, Qoornoq is one of dozens of traditional Inuit settlements around Greenland whose inhabitants were forcibly relocated by their Danish colonial rulers to apartment blocks in the larger cities, in what was billed as a modernization drive in the 1950s and 70s.
Now, for many Greenlanders, these wooden ghost towns stand as testaments to some of the bitter experiences of colonization and reminders of an overarching goal: to one day secure independence.
“It’s still a painful past for us and maybe one of the reasons why there is such strong antipathy towards Denmark,” said Vittus Qujaukitsoq, a former government minister whose father was forcibly expelled from a village in Greenland’s far north.
The relocation of Qujaukitsoq’s father and his family from their home village of Uummannaq in 1953 was also prompted by the establishment of a large US airbase in the area at the time. His father sued Denmark for years for losing his home.
Greenlanders still resent Denmark “because of the arrogance, because of the way people were treated,” Qujaukitsoq said. Now Greenland, he said, should shake off its colonial past and start on its own.
This is a conversation that the new president of the USA has brought to the fore Donald Trump’s interest in the arctic territory and the visit of his eldest son this month. When the younger Trump talked about Greenlanders experiencing “racism,” Qujaukitsoq said it resonated with him.
But although Greenlanders overwhelmingly support independence, they do not want to simply replace Denmark with OUR as a solution to the problems independence could cause for the island, which receives much of its budget in the form of grants from Copenhagen and lacks self-confidence in defence.
“It’s the duality of the question, always. If you are not owned by Denmark, who owns you?” said Pele Broberg, head of the Naleraq party. “But that’s not the way you should look.”
A small opposition party, Naleraq, takes the strongest stance towards independence. Unlike Greenland’s main political parties, he believes the island is ready to give up and has vowed to immediately begin secession talks if elected.
Naleraq’s plan for independence — which potentially involves cutting the state budget in half to make up for lost Danish bloc support — also sees a large US role.
“What I want the other parties to do in this election cycle is to go to the U.S. and say, ‘Look, folks, we need a defense agreement that goes into effect as soon as we become independent,'” Broberg said.
But the long-standing US interest in the island – Trump is not the first US president to float the idea of buying Greenland – has left its mark.
When tens of thousands of US troops arrived in northeast Greenland in the 1950s to build the Pituffik space base, it came as a shock to the remote village of Uummannaq of 300 people. The villagers were then forced to move 150 km north to an even more unforgiving climate, where they had to start a new settlement from scratch.
The base, the U.S.’s northernmost military installation — which is ice-bound for three-quarters of the year — remains critical to missile warning systems and space surveillance, and exemplifies Greenland’s strategic importance to U.S. security.
Listening to the stories of his ancestors’ experiences growing up, Qujaukitsoq also campaigned in government to secure funds to reverse the environmental damage caused by some 30 US military installations across Greenland during World War II.
But the politician felt that Denmark should pay, and his family held Denmark, not the US, responsible for their forced move.
“The Danes did it,” Broberg said. The founder of his party grew up in a village that was partially relocated, he added. “He remembers, when he was a child, people were separated, families, by these resettlement programs. It was done for Denmark to save money.”
He said Greenlanders would be happy if the American presence were to expand. “If they want to build 30 new bases on our east coast, go ahead.”
“The reality is that the US is protecting us, as it has done for the past 83 years,” said Qujaukitsoq, who was both Greenland’s finance minister and foreign minister. “So what’s the point of this anti-American sentiment?”
Frustration with their experience of Danish rule is a big motivator for Greenlanders’ desire for independence, said Naaja Nathanielsen, minister of justice and gender as well as mineral resources, who said she also found “grains of truth” in Trump Jr.’s words about discrimination.
“It’s not ancient history,” said Nathanielsen, who hails from a major political party and believes Greenland needs more years of work before becoming independent. “Of course it creates a lot of anger.”
Greenlanders — many of whom live in small, remote communities in a country of just 57,000 people — all knew people affected by colonial policies or experienced them firsthand, said Nathanielsen, whose own father was taken from home as a child and sent to boarding school in Denmark. .
Copenhagen, which has ruled Greenland since the 18th century – first as a colony and then granted increasing degrees of autonomy in 1979 and 2009 – has apologized for certain cases, such as a 1950s “social experiment” in which twenty Inuit children were brought to Denmark and cut off from their families in an attempt to reshape their identities.
Another Greenlander spoke of her family’s shock when she discovered that the reason her cousin was unable to conceive was because she had been fitted with an IUD as a young woman without her understanding or consent.
About 150 Greenlandic women are now suing Denmark over the practice, which is believed to have been carried out by Danish doctors in the 1960s to limit Greenland’s population and has affected around 4,500 women.
But many of these historical injustices remain unacknowledged, Nathanielsen said, and Denmark does not want to see itself as a colonizer.
“It kind of interferes with their self-image,” she said. “But if you don’t give people a stage and a platform to grieve, to be angry and to hear acceptance from the one who caused all this anger, we’re not going to cross over.”
In Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, clusters of dark concrete apartment blocks mark the city’s edges, some perched on bare, windswept cliffs overlooking the Labrador Sea.
Many Inuit fishing families were moved to such city blocks as part of Danish modernization, which sought to concentrate people in areas with jobs and factories, and to provide modern amenities.
After Greenland gained more self-government in recent years, some of Qoornoq’s former residents and their descendants began returning to set up summer cottages, breathing some life into the abandoned village during the few warmer months of the year.
But many, like Qujaukitsoq’s family, never returned.
“It was the most painful experience they had in their lives, they were denied access to their own land and hunting ground, which they lost,” he said.
