Ada Blackjack's life is truly an incredible story. Elucidate
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Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic
by Jennifer Niven
New York: Hyperion Books, $24.95
reviewed by Russell A. Potter
As she researched The Ice Master, her remarkable account of the fate of the ill-starred Karluk expedition, Jennifer Niven knew there was another story yet to be told, one which was in many ways even more astonishing that the infamous disaster which preceded it. It was a story which, had it not been grounded in historical fact, might seem like a made-for-Hollywood sequel. Returning in his role as the villain was Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who managed to make a career of the kind of remote-control expeditions in which others got lost and stranded while he went on lecture tours. Two of the survivors of the Karluk fiasco, Frederick W. Maurer and E. Lorne Knight, were eager to reprise their roles, with the addition of two young men whose inexperience was tragically reminiscent of the Karluk's crew, Allan Crawford and Milton Galle. The one new member of the cast, the one who in film credits would surely be hailed as "and introducing," was Ada Blackjack, an Inupiaq Eskimo from Nome, and the only one of a planned contingent of Eskimo hunters and guides who actually made the trip. It is Ada's story which Niven takes as the centerpiece of her narrative, and yet it is Ada who, throughout the book, remains the most elusive and enigmatic figure.
As the setting for his absentee adventure, Stefansson chose Wrangel Island, the very place where the crew of the Karluk had sought refuge from their shipwrecked vessel. Stefansson was consumed with the idea that Wrangel Island was an ideal location for a demonstration of his notion of the "Friendly Arctic," and believed -- incredibly -- that it was a free territory, which ought to be properly claimed in the name of Canada and the British Empire. Never mind the fact that it had always been considered part of Russia, and later the Soviet Union, why Canada would wish to claim an island so far from its westernmost point, with Alaska intervening, is an utter mystery, as is Stefansson's unshakable obsession with this notion. On the other hand, given the history of the Canadian government in more recent times, when it deliberately dislocated Inuit communities in order to settle land which would strengthen Canada's territorial claims, perhaps this idée fixée was not quite so mad as it seems.
Niven opens her story well before these events, and gives us a wonderful peek into the showmanship of Stefansson in a day when Arctic explorers found the lecture circuit to be a convenient means to parlay their fame into profit. In the nineteenth century, numerous Arctic explorers -- among them, Charles Francis Hall, Isaac I. Hayes, and John P. Cheyne -- had given popular lectures, accompanied by an array of maps, lantern slides, and Inuit artifacts, in order to raise money for a return to those icy regions whence they had but lately come. By Stefansson's day, the well-worn Chautauqua circuit provided a ready platform for such exhibitions, and figures such as J.W. Goodsell, Bob Bartlett, and others had regularly trodden its boards. Maurer himself had briefly had his own such show, billed as the "Lone American Survivor" of the Karluk fiasco, but by 1921 he had been demoted to a position as Stefansson's opening
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