Ada Blackjack's Remarkable Expedition

Making assumptions about the background of others is lazy. Consider the case of Ada Blackjack, a young Inupiat woman hired to sew and cook on a 2 year #expedition to an #Arctic Island in 1921. Destitute with a sick child, $50 a month was a powerful draw.

Her crew were 4 young men recruited for their scientific skills. They had 6 months supplies and promises from #explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson fresh meat was plentiful. All began well, but with winter game departed and they began to starve. Resupplies never arrived. In January 1923, the 3 healthiest men went for help and left Ada to nurse Lorne Knight, ill with scurvy. For months she tended him but also became the target for his pitiful rage. She bore the abuse stoically, though her diary revealed “He never stop and think how hard for a woman to take four mans place,".

After he died Ada was too weak to bury him and simply surrounded his body with boxes. She then endured many more months of isolation, shooting birds, setting traps for foxes and building a boat from animal skins and canvas. All the while she kept watch for polar bears.

Eventually rescued, Ada never got the credit she deserves for teaching herself how to survive. She grew up in an orphanage, learning to read the Bible, to sew and cook white men's food. Ada had had none of the "native skills" assumed of her but was an inspiring woman and #mother in her own right.
#inclusion #leadership