Al Adams, my first host in Arctic and Rural Alaska, has passed away

I hardly slept at all last night and so, early this morning, as I still lay on the recliner that continues to serve as my bed until I can heal some more, I pulled the NPR app in my iPhone and tuned in to KSKA to see what kind of news was being reported. After a few national reports, the Alaska statewide news came on. I was stunned to learn that Al Adams, Iñupiaq of Kotzebue, had died of cancer yesterday in his Anchorage home.

The news took my mind back to September of 1981. After spending two months roaming about Alaska's limited road system with my family as homeless people looking for a way to make a life in Alaska, I had finally landed a job with the Tundra Times, a weekly newspaper that served the Alaska Native Eskimo, Indian and Aleut communties. It is now out of business.

Kotzebue was the first place the paper sent me to and I spent my first night in the Nullagvik Hotel. There, in the restaurant, I met Al Adams, sitting at a table with Jacob Adams, who had become Mayor of the North Slope Borough following the death of Eben Hopson and Edward Itta, who would later serve as NSB mayor from 2005 to 2011 and who commissioned me to make a few Uiñiq magazines.

The original plan was for Jacob, Al, Edward and contingent to spend the next few days flying to the villages of the NANA region to discuss matters of mutual importance to the people there and the North Slope Borough and for me to follow, but an emergency came up in Barrow and Jacob and Edward had to return home. Having come to Kotzebue, I figured I might as well hang around for a week or so and see what kind of stories and photos I could come up with for the Tundra Times. I had no more budget to stay at the Nullagvik, so Al, who had recently been elected to the Alaska House and had already risen to become one of its most powerful members invited me to stay at his house where he promised me his mother, Sarah, would feed me well and take good care of me.

This is Al, participating in a meeting of the AFN board.

So I did. When I arrived, his mother was butchering a fresh killed moose. Maybe Al shot that moose, maybe one of his sons or another relative did. I can't remember for sure, but pretty soon I was helping to eat it and it tasted so much better than any Lower 48 deer I had ever eaten I could hardly believe it. Al was right - his mother did feed me well - moose, salmon, freshly harvested wild salmon berries and blue berries, along with black bowhead maktak from the Arctic Slope and white beluga maktak taken locally. Afterward she told me many stories.

Several members of his family were there, including his sisters Red and Sarah, and his oldest son, Al Jr., "Sonny Boy," who took me boating on Kotzebue Sound, three-wheeling about the local area and also showed me the places in the village where I could buy a hamburger. His family all treated me wonderfully.

Al had a big house, two stories, with a fireplace made of jade quarried at nearby Ambler. We spent some decent time sitting by that fireplace as Al told me this and that about life in the NANA Region, his history with the Native land claims and the Alaska Federation of Natives and how the bush caucus in the legislature had managed to outfox the urban legislators to achieve a level of power never before experienced by Native and rural legislators in State government.

So that was my introduction to the Arctic. Al would continue on to the Senate, where he became chairman of the powerful finance committee. Later, he became a lobbyist and did very well for himself and his clients, which included the North Slope Borough.

I last saw him in August of 2010 at the Arctic Economic Development Summit held in Kotzebue that year. Just as he always did, he greeted me with a big smile and a warm handshake. He was 68 years old but hardly looked a day over 50. He will take a lot of Alaska history to the grave with him. I wish I had gotten to know him better.

Here he is with his son, Guy, at an earlier summit meeting held in Barrow.

Scattered here and there among negatives and hard drives are many more photos I took of Al, but these are the ones that came up this morning when I typed his name into my computer search engine.

Comments

[Andrea]

Very sad when someone of this caliber leaves too soon. On another note, I thought you might like this story because it has dogs and planes.

http://www.lifewithdogs.tv/2012/05/death-row-dog-pilots-plane-and-pack-of-peers-from-kill-shelter-to-freedom/

[Alaska Pi]

I am sorry for all of us, especially Mr Adams' family and friends , that he is gone .
I will be ever thankful that Mr Adams made making Alaska, especially rural Alaska, a better , more equitable place his life's work.
Thank you Mr Adams. I wish I could have told you that in person.