An abandoned railroad tracks through deep snow and the icy wind rattles the empty window frames of a derelict fish processing plant in the desert village of Qoornoq, located on the edge of Greenland’s second largest fjord between ice floes.

Once a busy Arctic fishing village, Qoornoq is one of the many traditional Inuit settlements throughout. Greenland whose residents were forcibly relocated by their Danish colonial masters to apartment blocks in major cities, in what was billed in the 1950s-70s as a modernization drive.

Today, for many Greenlanders, these wooden ghost towns stand as testaments to some of the more bitter experiences of colonization and reminders of an overriding goal: to secure future independence.

“It’s still a painful past for us, and maybe one of the reasons why there’s such strong antipathy in Denmark,” said Vittus Qujaukitsoq, a former government minister whose father was forcibly removed from a village far away. north of Greenland.

The relocation of Qujaukitsoq’s father and his family from their home village of Uummannaq in 1953 was also caused by the construction of a major US air base in the area at the time. His father spent years suing Denmark for the loss of his home.

Greenlanders are still angry with Denmark “because of arrogance, because of the way people are treated”, said Qujaukitsoq. Now, he said, Greenland must leave behind its colonial past and start on its own.

This is a conversation brought forward by the future president of the US Donald Trump’s interest in the Arctic territory and the fly-by visit this month of his eldest son. When the young Trump talked about Greenlanders experiencing “racism”, Qujaukitsoq said it intrigued him.

But although Greenlanders support independence, they don’t want to simply replace Denmark with US as a solution to the problems that independence may raise for the island, which receives a large part of its budget in the form of a grant from Copenhagen and lacks self-confidence in defense.

“That’s the duality of the question, always. If you don’t own Denmark, who do you own?” said Pele Broberg, head of the Naleraq party. “But that’s not how you look at it.”

A small opposition party, Naleraq takes the strongest line of independence. Unlike the main political parties in Greenland, it believes that the island is ready to be rejected, and has promised to immediately start negotiations on secession if elected.

Naleraq’s plan for independence – which could potentially include slashing the government’s budget in half to make up for the lost Danish block grant – also sees a big role for the US.

“What I want the other parties to do in this election cycle is to go to the US and say: ‘Look, guys, we need a defense agreement to be implemented the second we become independent. ,'” Broberg said.

But the enduring US interest in the island – Trump is not the first US president to raise the idea of ​​buying Greenland – has left a mark.

When tens of thousands of US troops arrived in the 1950s in northeastern Greenland to build the Pituffik Space Base, it was a shock for the remote, 300-strong village of Uummannaq. The villagers were later forced to move 150km north to a more unforgiving climate, where they had to start a new settlement from scratch.

The base, the northernmost US military facility – locked in ice for three quarters of the year – remains critical for missile warning systems and space surveillance, and reflects Greenland’s strategic importance for US security. .

Hearing the stories of his ancestors’ experiences growing up, Qujaukitsoq also campaigned with the government to get funding to restore the environmental damage caused by about 30 US military installations in Greenland during the second world war. .

But it is Denmark that the politician feels must pay, and his family holds Denmark, not the US, responsible for their forced move.

“That’s the Danes doing that,” Broberg said. The founder of his party grew up in a village that was partially resettled, he added. “He remembers, when he was young, people were separated, families, by these relocation programs. This was done 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 past 83 years,” said Qujaukitsoq, who served as Greenland’s finance minister and foreign minister. “So what’s the point of having this anti-US sentiment?”

Disillusionment with their experience of Danish rule is a big motivator in Greenlanders’ desire for independence, said Naaja Nathanielsen, minister for justice and gender, as well as for mineral resources, who said he found He also had a “grain of truth” in Trump Jr.’s words. about discrimination.

“This is not ancient history,” said Nathanielsen, who comes from a larger political party and believes Greenland needs years of work before it becomes independent. “Of course it generated a lot of anger.”

Greenlanders – many of whom live in small, remote communities in the country of just 57,000 people – all know people affected by colonial policies or have experienced them firsthand, said Nathanielsen, whose own father was taken from at 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 it increased degrees of autonomy in 1979 and 2009 – has apologized in some cases, such as a 1950 “social experiment” in which two dozen Inuit children were brought. to Denmark and cut off from their families in an attempt to change their identity.

Another resident of Greenland spoke of her family’s shock at discovering 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 carried out by Danish doctors in the 1960s to limit Greenland’s population and has affected about 4,500 women.

But many of these historical mistakes are not known, says Nathanielsen, who hates to see Denmark as a colonizer.

“It’s kind of a mess with their self-image,” he 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 the anger, we’re not going to get through this.”

In Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, clusters of sombre concrete apartment blocks mark the edges of town, some perched on bare, windswept rocks overlooking the Labrador Sea.

Many Inuit fishing families were moved to these city blocks as part of the Danish modernization drive, which sought to concentrate people in areas with jobs and factories, and to provide modern facilities.

After Greenland gained more autonomy in recent years, some of Qoornoq’s former residents and their descendants began returning to build summer homes, breathing a little life into the abandoned that village during some of the warmer months of the year.

But many, like Qujaukitsoq’s family, never returned.

“This is the most painful experience they have had in their lives, being denied access to their own land and their hunting grounds, which they have lost,” he said.