Ada Blackjack: The Lone Survivor of Wrangel Island

When you picture a 1921 Arctic expedition, you imagine hardened bearded men. Yet the only human to survive the crushing isolation of Wrangel Island was a 23-year-old Inupiaq mother with no wilderness training, armed with a sewing kit and a desperate desire to save her sick son. This episode reconstructs the harrowing true story of Ada Blackjack.Recruited as an English-speaking seamstress for a doomed expedition built on Vilhjalmur Stefansson's friendly Arctic theory, Ada was left alone after three men vanished on the ice and a fourth died of scurvy. Over eight months she taught herself to hunt, trap, and build a boat, surviving through methodical intelligence and fierce devotion.She once walked 40 miles across Alaska with her son Bennett after being abandoned by an abusive husbandShe joined the expedition to earn money for Bennett's tuberculosis care, discovering too late she was the only native person aboardShe taught herself to shoot, mastered the traps, cured reindeer skins for parkas, and built a skin boat from driftwood and canvasRescued in August 1923, she was labeled the female Robinson Crusoe but received no royalties as others profited from her storyShe used her wages and fox furs to get Bennett treatment, later remarried, and died in 1983 at age 85 in Alaska