Alaska Native leaders are remembering a long-time advocate for Inuit rights, James “Jimmy” Stotts, who died late last month after a long fight with cancer. He was 78.
For more than four decades, Stotts chaired or held other key roles at the Inuit Circumpolar Council, an organization that represents Inuit people from Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Russia. In his work, he fought for protecting Inuit food sovereignty and culture and for including Inuit people in Arctic policy decisions.
“He cared so much for our people all across the circumpolar north, because we're related – they are family, they are friends,” said Patsy Aamodt, Stotts’ friend and former colleague. “He was a champion for our people. He lived it.”
Stotts was born in Utqiagvik and grew up in various villages across Alaska. That background informed his advocacy for Inuit people to take leadership over managing subsistence resources, Aamodt said.
“He knew the importance of making sure caribou were caught, and enough caribou was caught for people who were unable to hunt for themselves, the elderly, and people with no hunters in their family,” Aamodt said. “Nobody had to explain that to him.”
Before his long career with the Inuit Circumpolar Council, Stotts worked for several North Slope governments and tribal organizations, including the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation.
Rex Rock Sr., the current head of the corporation, called Stotts a mentor.
“What I saw of Jimmy was the patience he had, and how straightforward he was, the leadership he brought into the room. He just brought a calmness, you know?” Rock said. “He was someone that I respected, and you always looked up to.”
The leadership of the Inuit Circumpolar Council Alaska said in a written statement that Stotts helped shape the direction of Inuit governance and worked to bring people across the Arctic together.
Rock said that Stotts’ Utqiagvik roots helped those efforts.
“We know, being whalers, that you cannot accomplish landing that whale on your own,” he said. “He knew what it took to work together to accomplish great things.”
Former Alaska politician and Northwest Arctic leader Reggie Joule knew Stotts for a long time. He said Stotts worked to make sure that the unified voice of the Inuit was heard and listened to on the international stage.
“He was a forward-thinking man,” Joule said. “He was aware of what was going on in the present, but he had a good long view.”
Joule said Stotts was among the leaders who made it their goal to educate others about the Inupiaq way of life
“This is something that Jimmy understood really well – rise to the challenge and responsibility of being an Indigenous person,” he said. “It goes on to basics – teaching your children the things that we would like to continue to be.”
Stotts’ colleagues and friends also remember his dedication to his family and humor.
“He was a really good dancer, and a heck of an athlete,” Joule said.
Aamodt said she believes Stott’s work will continue.
“My hope and my prayer is that our young people will take on that mantle and run with it like he did,” she said.
