“What you were subjected to was terrible; it was inhumane, it was unfair, and it was heartless,” Mette Frederiksen told the six Inuit Greenlanders at a ceremony in the Danish capital, Copenhagen.

They were among 22 Inuit children sent to Denmark from Greenland in 1951 to learn Danish. It was part of a scheme to raise “model” Greenlanders to help bridge Danish and indigenous cultures.

However, the children remained separated from their families, lost their mother tongue and struggled with identity issues.

Faced with legal action, the Danish government settled and agreed to pay damages of 250,000 Danish kroner ($38,000; £28,000) to each of the six. The other 16 people involved have since passed away.

Kristine Heinesen, 76, remembers vividly the day she was taken from her family, aged five.

“My brother rowed me out to the ship,” she recalls as she thumbs through a collection of old black-and-white photographs. “The MS Disko.”

At first she was excited, she says, as she thought she was going on a sailing trip. “But we went further and further away, and it became clear that I was not coming back.”

The children, all aged four to nine, were first placed in a care home and then lived with Danish foster parents.