Danish and US power loom over Greenland’s Arctic ghost towns.

An abandoned railway line cuts through deep snow and an icy wind rattles the empty window frames of a derelict fish processing factory in the desolate village of Qornoq, nestled between glaciers at the edge of Greenland’s second-largest fjord.

Once a busy Arctic fishing village, Qornoq is one of dozens of Inuit settlements in Greenland that were forcibly relocated to apartment buildings in large cities by their Danish colonial rulers in the 1950s-70s as a form of modernisation.

Now, for many Greenlanders, these wooden ghost towns are reminders of some of the more bitter experiences of colonialism and a triumphant goal: one day secure independence.

Former government minister Vittus Kujakitisok said his father’s forced eviction from a remote village in Greenland’s north “is still very painful for us, and one of the reasons why we have such a strong hatred for Denmark.”

In 1953, Qujakikisok’s father and his family were evacuated from their home village of Umunak due to the establishment of an American air base in the area. His father had been suing Denmark for years for losing his home.

Greenlanders still resent Denmark “because of arrogance, because of the way people have treated them,” Kujakikisok said. Now, he says, Greenland must shake off its colony and go on its own.

Incoming US President Donald Trump’s interest in Arctic territory and his eldest son’s fly-by visit this month. When the younger Trump talked about Greenlanders experiencing “racism,” Kujakukitsok said he agreed with him.

But while Greenlanders strongly support independence, they are not interested in easily replacing Denmark with the US, which gets most of its budget from Copenhagen in aid to deal with the problems independence might bring, and has none. Self-sufficiency in defense.

“The question is duality, always. If you are not Danish, who do you belong to?” Pele Broberg, head of the Nalerak party, said. “But that’s not how you should see it.”

A small opposition party, Nalerak, takes a hard line against independence. Unlike Greenland’s main political parties, he believes the island is ready to divest, and has promised to start secession talks immediately if elected.

Nalerak’s independence plan – which involves cutting the government budget in half to make up for the lost Danish bloc grant – also plays an important role for the US.

“What I want other parties to do this election cycle is go to America and say, ‘Look, folks, we need a defense deal that works when we’re free,'” Broberg said.

But the United States’ enduring interest in the island — Trump is not the first U.S. president to entertain the idea of ​​buying Greenland — has left its mark.

In the year When U.S. troops arrived to build a Putufic space base in northeast Greenland in the 1950s, it came as a shock to the remote, 300-strong village of Ummumank. The villagers were then forced to move 150 km north to the unforgiving climate.

The base, the U.S.’s northernmost military facility — locked in ice for three-quarters of the year — remains critical to missile warning systems and space defenses, and highlights Greenland’s strategic importance to U.S. security.

Hearing the stories of his ancestors growing up, Kojakikisok campaigned within the government for funding to reverse the environmental damage caused by some 30 US military installations throughout Greenland during World War II.

But it was Denmark that the politician felt had to pay, and the family blamed Denmark, not America, for their forced actions.

“It was the Danes who did it,” Broberg said. He added that the founder of his party grew up from the village where he settled. “He remembers, as a child, people were separated, families, in these relocation programs. It was done to Denmark to save money.

Greenlanders said they would be happy to see the U.S. presence expand. “If you want to build 30 new neighborhoods on our east coast, be weird.”

“It is true that the US is waiting for us, as they have done for the past 83 years,” said Kujakukitsok, who served as Greenland’s finance minister and foreign minister. “So what’s the point of having this anti-American sentiment?”

Justice, Gender and Mineral Resources Minister Naja Nathanielsen said she found “a grain of truth” in Trump Jr.’s words, saying frustration at their experience under Danish rule is a big boost to Greenlanders’ desire for independence. About discrimination.

“This is not ancient history,” said Nathanielson, who hails from a major political party and believes Greenland needs more years of work before independence. “Of course it creates a lot of anger.”

Greenlanders — many of whom live in small, remote communities of 57,000 people — all know people who have been affected by colonial policies or have experienced them firsthand, says Nathanielsen, whose own father was taken away from home and sent to boarding school as a child in Denmark.

Copenhagen, which has ruled Greenland since the 18th century – first as a colony and then granted increasing autonomy in 1979 and 2009 – has apologized for certain issues, such as a “social experiment” in the 1950s in which two dozen Inuit children came forward. They were cut off from their families and moved to Denmark to change their identity.

Another Greenlander recounted her family’s shock because her relative had been fitted with a contraceptive coil at a young age without her knowledge and consent because she was unable to conceive.

About 150 Greenlandic women are suing Denmark for the practice, which Danish doctors used in the 1960s to limit Greenland’s population and harmed nearly 4,500 women.

Denmark is loathe to see itself as a colonial power, but Nathanielson says many of these historical mistakes are not acknowledged.

“It ruins their image,” she said. But if you don’t hear people feeling sad, angry, and accepted by the person who created all this anger, we’re not going to go through what we’ve been through.

In Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, clusters of sombre concrete apartments mark the city’s edge. Some of them are windswept rocks standing on the shores of Labrador.

Many Inuit fishing families moved into city blocks, part of Denmark’s modernization drive, which sought to gather people around jobs and factories and provide modern amenities.

After Greenland gained more autonomy in recent years, some of Qornoq’s former residents and their descendants returned to set up homes in the summer months, breathing a little life into the abandoned village during the few warmer months of the year.

But many, like the Qujaaukitsoq family, never came back.

“It was the most painful experience of their lives because they were denied access to their own land and hunting grounds,” he said.