Ada Blackjack

Ada Blackjack was an Iñupiat seamstress who joined the 1921 Canadian Arctic Expedition to Wrangel Island. After the other members died or disappeared, she survived alone for months in extreme conditions until her rescue in 1923, becoming the expedition’s sole survivor.

Blackjack had joined the Wrangel Island party as a seamstress and cook rather than as an experienced Arctic explorer, but circumstances forced her to acquire the skills needed to survive. After three expedition members left the island in search of help and E. Lorne Knight died of scurvy, she learned to trap, shoot and maintain the camp alone while caring for the expedition cat. Her rescue in 1923 brought international publicity, though she later returned to a comparatively private life in Alaska and received little of the financial reward generated by the expedition’s story.

In Giles Milton’s Empire at the Edge of the World, in 1921, explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson attempted to establish a settlement on Wrangel Island and claim the remote Arctic territory for the British Empire. He sent four young men and Ada Blackjack, an Iñupiat seamstress hired for the expedition, into an environment for which the party was inadequately supplied and unevenly prepared.