Aqqaluk Lynge: Ten thousand years of our wisdom and Lenin watching drum dances

Aqqaluk Lynge (born 1947, Aasiaat) is a Greenlandic poet and politician. In 2026, he published the book Inuit Tumisiorlugit (On the Trails of the Inuit), which reflects half a century of his authorial and political engagement with the world and culture of Arctic peoples. From 1995 to 2002, he served as President of the Inuit Circumpolar Council (formerly the Inuit Circumpolar Conference). He is a former member of the Inatsisartut and one of the founders of the Greenlandic political party Inuit Ataqatigiit. As an Indigenous inhabitant of Greenland (Kalaaleq), Lynge became a member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in 2004, an advisory body to the UN Economic and Social Council. In 2008, he was a visiting fellow at the Institute of Arctic Studies at Dartmouth College, where he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree in 2012. Lynge is also known as an author of poetry and essays, published in Greenlandic, Danish, English, and French.