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SPEAKER_00: Hello, from Wonder Media Network, I'm Jenny Kaplan, and this is Womanica. This month we're talking about adventurers, women who refuse to be confined. They push the boundaries of where a woman could go and how she could get there. May 3rd, I was out to chop wood today and I saw a snowbird. Oh my, how I was glad to see snowbirds come and I was out to see a snowbird. I saw a snowbird come and I was out to the traps and didn't see anything, even a track, and I opened case of biscuits. These words are from the diary of a woman concerned with daily survival in a barren landscape. She was a resourceful woman who learned to adapt to the harsh conditions of the Arctic and the sole survivor of an expedition set up to fail. Let's talk about Ada Blackjack. Ada was born in the remote Inupiat settlement of Spruce Creek, Alaska in 1898. She was born at the height of the Alaskan Gold Rush. In the following years, thousands of people flocked to the area in search of fortune. The population boom brought saloons, a post office, and railroad tracks. But by 1918, most of this development was lost. And then the flu epidemic swept through and decimated the remaining population. Ada had been sent to the neighboring town of Nome when she was young, shortly after her father died. She was taken in and raised by Methodist missionaries. They taught her English in order to read the Bible and how to write and sew and cook white people's food. She did not learn what she would have been taught back home in her village, including essential Arctic skills like hunting. Ada married a local man named Jack Blackjack when she was 16 years old. They had three children, two of whom died before Jack abandoned her in 1921. Ada and her child, five-year-old Bennett, walked from where they'd been living on the Seaward Peninsula to Nome, a 40-mile trek. Once back in Nome, Ada was forced to leave Bennett in an orphanage. Bennett had tuberculosis. She couldn't afford to care for him on her meager wages as a seamstress and housekeeper. Then, Ada heard of a job that promised $50 a month, an unheard-of amount compared to the money she'd been making. She hoped this would allow her to get Bennett the medical treatment he needed and provide him with a better life. The job was a position as an English-speaking seamstress on an expedition headed for Wrangell Island, north of the Siberian coast. The island was inhospitable, barren, and regularly battered by Arctic storms. Yet it attracted the attention of nearby nations who hoped to colonize it. By 1911, the British, American, and Russian governments had all established different claims. But nearly all the fanfare and controversy about who owned Wrangell Island was stoked by one man, Vilhelmer Steffensen. Canadian-born Vilhelmer was a charismatic and ambitious explorer. He was also a good writer who knew how to stir public opinion and convince funders to invest in his wild adventures. He assembled a small team of people to establish a colony on the Wrangell Island on behalf of the British Empire. But he didn't want to go himself, perhaps because previous trips to the island had gone wrong, or maybe because he picked underprepared people and sent them off with only six months' worth of supplies. Vilhelmer assured the expedition members that there was no need to worry, though. He said the friendly Arctic would provide them with more food. Ada had her own misgivings about going, especially because she didn't want to be the only Inupiat on the vessel. She was told there would be others, including families. In the end, Ada was the only Inupiat on the expedition and the only woman. She and her four other companions, white men with varying degrees of experience and a cat named Vic, set sail on September 9, 1921, with the expectation that they would be picked up in a year. One week and 620 miles later, they arrived on Wrangell Island. The temperature was just above freezing and howling winds blew snow across the tundra. The men spent their days exploring the island, studying the wildlife and documenting their observations, while Ada cleaned, cooked, and sewed clothes. A year later, the team spent all summer looking toward the horizon for their relief ship, but September rolled through with no sign of it. Unbeknownst to them, the ice around the island had become impenetrable. The ship chartered to pick them up, had to turn back. Ada and the men began to frantically ration what remained of their food supply. Then came another winter of pure darkness and below freezing temperatures. By the beginning of 1923, they were desperate. They were all starving and one explorer, Lorne Knight, had developed scurvy. So on January 28, 1923, the other three men decided to leave Ada with Lorne while they set out toward Siberia in search of help. That was the last time anyone saw them. Ada spent the next six months caring for Lorne. She taught herself things no one had taken the time to teach her. She walked for miles in search of food, learning how to trap and hunt. She practiced using the gun, which had frightened her for so long. She even built a lookout platform above their shelter so she could keep an eye out for bears and scare them off. Lorne was not grateful for how Ada nursed and cared for him. He berated her constantly for not doing enough. Ada wrote about this and everything else about their daily struggle to stay alive in her diary. When Lorne Knight died on June 23rd, she recorded that too. Ada and Vic the cat were now alone. It had been nearly two years since she and her team had first arrived on the desolate island. She gathered the strength she had to keep going, as she still had every intention of surviving and making it home to her son. Ada reinforced her shelter, got by on trapping foxes and shooting birds when she could, and even used the team's photographic equipment to take some photographs of herself during this time. Then, on August 20th, a ship finally crested the horizon. Upon her return, Ada was swallowed in a media frenzy. Some called her the real-life female Robinson Crusoe, but others maligned her, accusing her of neglecting Lorne. Ada, on the whole, stayed away from journalists. Ada was eventually reunited with her son, Bennett, and she used her payment from the expedition to help treat his tuberculosis. He had health problems for the rest of his life and died when he was 58 years old. Ada died 10 years later in 1983. She was 85 years old. All month, we're talking about adventurers. For more information, find us on Facebook and Instagram at Womanika Podcast. Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator. Talk to you tomorrow.
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