Cryolite entered the Greenland election campaign on February 8. On that day, the cultural center in Nuuk, the capital of the autonomous Danish territory, premiered a documentary entitled Greenland’s White Gold, broadcast the following day on the Danish public channel DR. It revealed that, for more than a century, the extraction of this mineral, used in the production of aluminum, and whose only deposit, now depleted, was on the island’s west coast, had earned the equivalent of 400 billion kroner (nearly 54 billion euros) for the company in charge of its extraction and the Danish state. A fortune!

While the figures have since been disputed by Danish economists and the documentary withdrawn from the channel’s platform, Greenlanders saw it as confirmation of the enormous potential nestled in their subsoil, which, if exploited, could lead the territory’s 56,500 inhabitants towards independence. Donald Trump’s desire for the island, which is four times the size of France, has only served to validate this hypothesis.

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