Born in Aasiaat, Greenland in 1947, Aqqaluk Lynge represented the Inuit of Alaska, Canada, Greenland and the Far East of Russia as President of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC) from 1997 to 2002. Prior to this, Mr. Lynge was a member of the ICC executive council since 1980, and has served as ICC Greenland president from 2002 until the present. Mr. Lynge started his professional career as a social worker after graduating from the National Danish School of Social Work in 1976. For several years, he was a radio broadcaster until he entered Greenland politics. He has promoted the rights of indigenous peoples both in his home country of Greenland and globally since his youth.
Mr. Lynge was elected to the Greenland Parliament in 1983 and has served both as a Member of Parliament and as a minister of various portfolios. Mr. Lynge is widely published, having written books of poetry, essays and politics. He has also contributed to several works and anthologies written in the English, Greenlandic, French and Nordic languages.
Mr. Lynge was instrumental in bringing Russian Inuit into the ICC family when, as early as 1985, he traveled to Moscow in the former Soviet Union to lobby for their inclusion into ICC. In 1988, he also visited Chukotka in the Soviet far Northeast where most of Russia’s Inuit live. He has been an invited speaker at a wide range of international human right fora, at wildlife management conferences, environmental summits, Arctic Council ministers’ summits and others. Mr. Lynge is known globally for speaking out on behalf of all indigenous peoples on matters of climate change and the effects it is having on their communities.
Mr. Lynge was member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues from 2004 – 2007, and served as its Vice-Chair. Aqqaluk Lynge resides in Nuuk, Greenland with his wife and two children.