An abandoned railway runs through deep snow and an icy wind rattles the empty window frames of an abandoned fish processing factory in the deserted village of Qoornoq, located on the edge of Greenland’s second largest fjord between pieces of glacial ice.
Once a busy fishing village in the Arctic, Qoornoq is one of dozens of traditional Inuit settlements across Greenland whose residents were forcibly relocated by their Danish colonial rulers to apartment blocks in larger cities in what was billed in the 1950s-70s as a modernization effort.
Now, for many Greenlanders, these wooden ghost towns stand as testaments to some of the most bitter experiences of colonization and reminders of an overriding goal: to one day secure independence.
“It is still a painful past for us and perhaps one of the reasons why there is such a strong antipathy towards Denmark,” said Vittus Qujaukitsoq, a former government minister whose father was forcibly removed from a village in the north remote Greenland.
The displacement of Qujaukitsoq’s father and his family from their home village of Uummannaq in 1953 was also prompted by the establishment of a large American air base in the area at the time. His father spent years suing Denmark for the loss of his home.
Greenlanders still resent Denmark “because of the arrogance, because of the way people were treated,” Qujaukitsoq said. Now, he said, Greenland must shake off its colonial past and strike out on its own.
It’s a conversation highlighted by incoming US President Donald Trump’s interest in the Arctic territory and a quick visit this month by his eldest son. When the younger Trump talked about Greenlanders experiencing “racism,” Qujaukitsoq said it resonated with him.
But although Greenlanders overwhelmingly support independence, they are not inclined to simply replace Denmark with the US as a solution to the problems independence might raise for the island, which receives a large part of its budget in the form of a grant from Copenhagen and lacks confidence in defence.
“This is the duality of the question, always. If you are not owned by Denmark, who are you? said Pele Broberg, head of the Naleraq party. “But you don’t have to look at it that way.”
A small opposition party, Naleraq holds the strongest line for independence. Unlike Greenland’s main political parties, it believes the island is ready to leave and has vowed to start secession negotiations immediately if elected.
Naleraq’s plan for independence – which potentially involves cutting the government’s budget in half to make up for the lost Danish bloc grant – also sees a big role for the US.
“What I want the other parties to do in this election cycle is go to the U.S. and say, ‘Look, guys, we need a defense deal that’s going to be in place the moment we become independent,” said Broberg.
But America’s enduring interest in the island — Trump is not the first American president to float the idea of buying Greenland — has left its mark.
When tens of thousands of American troops arrived in the 1950s in northeast Greenland to build the Pituffik space base, it came as a shock to the remote village of 300 people of Uummannaq. 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 northernmost U.S. military facility — which is sealed off by ice for three-quarters of the year — remains critical for missile warning systems and space surveillance, and illustrates Greenland’s strategic importance to U.S. security. -‘s.
Hearing stories of his ancestors’ experience growing up, Qujaukitsoq also campaigned for the government to secure funding to restore the environmental damage caused by some 30 US military installations across Greenland during World War II.
But it was Denmark that the politician felt had to pay, and his family holds Denmark, not the US, responsible for their forced move.
“It was the Danes who did it,” Broberg said. The founder of his party grew up in a village that was partially displaced, he added. “He remembers that when he was a child, people were separated, families, by these relocation programs. It was made for Denmark to save money.”
He said Greenlanders would be happy to see the US presence expand. “If they want to build 30 new bases on our east coast, be my guest.”
“It is a reality that the US is protecting us, as they have done for the last 83 years,” said Qujaukitsoq, who has served as Greenland’s finance minister and foreign minister. “So what’s the point of having this anti-US sentiment?”
Frustration with their experience of Danish rule is a big motivator for Greenlanders’ desire for independence, said Naaja Nathanielsen, minister for justice and gender and mineral resources, who said she also found a “grain of truth” in Trump Jr.’s words regarding discrimination.
“It’s not ancient history,” said Nathanielsen, who comes from a major political party and believes Greenland needs years more work before becoming independent. “It certainly produces a lot of anger.”
Greenlanders — many of whom live in small, remote communities in the country of just 57,000 — all knew people affected by colonial policies or had experienced them firsthand, said Nathanielsen, whose father was taken from home as a child. and was sent to boarding school in Denmark.
Copenhagen, which has ruled Greenland since the 18th century – first as a colony and then giving it increasing degrees of autonomy in 1979 and 2009 – has apologized for some cases, such as a years-long “social experiment” 1950, in which two dozen Inuit children were brought. in Denmark and cut themselves off from their families in an attempt to reshape their identity.
Another Greenlander spoke of her family’s shock when she discovered that the reason a relative could not get pregnant was that, as a young woman, she had been fitted with a contraceptive coil without her understanding or consent.
About 150 Greenlandic women are now suing Denmark over the practice, which is believed to have been implemented by Danish doctors in the 1960s to limit Greenland’s population and has affected around 4,500 women.
But many of these historical wrongs remain unacknowledged, Nathanielsen said, with Denmark unwilling to see itself as a coloniser.
“It messes 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 an admission from the one who caused all this anger, we’re not going to get through it.”
In Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, clusters of dark concrete apartment blocks dot the city’s fringes, some perched on bare, windswept cliffs overlooking the Labrador Sea.
Many Inuit fishing families moved to such city blocks as part of the Danish modernization drive, which sought to concentrate people in areas with jobs and factories and provide modern amenities.
After Greenland gained more self-government in recent years, some of Qoornoq’s former residents and their descendants began to return to set up summer homes, breathing life into the abandoned village during the few warm months of the year.
But many, like Qujaukitsoq’s family, never returned.
“It was the most painful experience they’ve had in their lives, being denied access to their land and their hunting grounds, which they lost,” he said.
