John Qipqina Schaeffer Jr.

(1939 - 2016)

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John Qipqina Schaeffer, Jr. was born in 1939 and passed away in 2016 at the age of 77. If there is a single word to define John Schaeffer Jr., it would be “leadership”. Whether it was being the first Inupiaq two-star general and Adjutant General of the Alaska National Guard, the first President of NANA Regional Corporation, the first mayor of the Northwest Arctic Borough, or President of the Alaska Federation of Natives, John was a visionary compassionate, and effective leader.

Early Years

He was the son of John and Annie Schaffer who had 11 other children of which John was the eldest. They lived in and around Kotzebue and John Sr. lived a very traditional subsistence lifestyle most of the time. In a 1998 interview with A.J. McClanahan, John paints a picture of life in rural Alaska:

“I was the first child of what ended up being a large family. My parents had twelve children, ten of whom are still alive. We lived in a small, two-room house, basically. There was no electricity, no sewer and water, no fuel oil (laughs), no trees--not in Kotzebue….we would get up in the morning to get the stove going, usually with wood. Later on, when we started hauling coal, we used a combination of wood and coal…….And then we went off to school. We had a BIA school. At that time, it was a two-room school, at least for the first couple of years. I think in the 4th grade, we moved into a four-room school.”

John Jr. never graduated from high school. He would later recall:

“The nearest high school that we could go to when I was ready was Mt. Edgecumbe (in Sitka, Southeast Alaska) and that’s where I went along with kids all over the State. So it was a good place to meet people that you later worked with on ANCSA and other things. But it was also difficult because you had to leave home in the fall and fly all of the way down to the other end of the State. If you were lucky, you could get back home and spend the summer there—I wasn’t so lucky so I spent two years at Mt. Edgecombe in a row…..Us unlucky ones, we worked on the garbage trucks and mowed lawns and busted up boulders for the summer. But other than that, it was a good life.”

He left Mt. Edgecumbe after his junior year. John obtained his GED so that he could join the Alaska National Guard at the age of 17. After his basic training he went to NCO school, but when the military tested him, he was immediately sent to Officer Candidate School and became an officer at the age of 18.

Schaeffer had a distinguished career in the National Guard rising to it’s highest position in Alaska, but his dedication to his home region in northwest Alaska played an important role in Alaska history. Under the influence of his uncle, Willie Hensley, he became a founding member of the Northwest Alaska Native Association (abbreviated NANA), the group formed to work with the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) to fight for the settlement of Native land claims.

Schaeffer’s Connection to Mining

John’s earliest connection to mining goes back to the 1940’s when his father would go off to work in placer gold mines in the Candle district in the northeastern part of the Seward Peninsula south of Kotzebue. However, John’s main mining credentials stem from him leading NANA into the successful negotiation of the complex agreement with then Cominco Limited (Cominco), which led to the development of the Red Dog mine.

Mining was of interest to NANA from its inception. The history of the Candle district where John’s father worked at small placer gold mines, and the exploration work in the Ambler district (See Bigelow biography in this newsletter) were well known at the time NANA was formed. Later work began at the Lik zinc-lead-silver deposit (see biography of Riz Bigelow in this newsletter) near where the Red Dog Mine is today. NANA’s executive leadership toured the villages to assess their vision and concerns for the future. One concern was mining, and it was clear that people in the region were largely suspicious of mining as an industry. The concerns were based on the possible impact on subsistence resources, other possible environmental effects, and the history of western resource development activities bringing very little positive economic gain to Native people.

In 1977, representatives of the mining industry came to Kotzebue to meet with John and other members of NANA’s leadership. They told NANA that there was a very impressive prospect known as Red Dog about 90 miles north of Kotzebue. The prospect was first recognized by pioneer aviator Bob Baker of Kotzebue and U.S. Geological Survey geologist Irv Tailleur, who reported his findings in a 1970 open file report. Editor’s Note—both Baker and Tailleur were inducted into the Alaska Mining Hall of Fame in 2016.

The Red Dog prospect was then inside a d-2 withdrawal and being considered for inclusion in the proposed Noatak National Park. Members of the mining industry believed that they would not be able to persuade Congress to leave the Red Dog prospect outside the boundaries of the park, but that NANA might be able to. NANA was able to convince Congress that the prospect should be excluded from the park and were also able to obtain the right to select the lands around the prospect in the final version of the Alaska National Interest Lands Act (ANILCA).

Having gained the right to own the prospect, John, Robert Newlin (Chairman of NANA’s Board), and the NANA staff were left with two major tasks. The first was to work with NANA shareholders to see if their concerns could be addressed and the second was to select a mining company to be their partner. John’s leadership was crucial in both of these efforts. After an extensive process of reviewing proposals from a number of mining companies, NANA signed an agreement with Cominco Limited on October 11th, 1982 to develop the Red Dog deposit.

The agreement NANA signed with Cominco was groundbreaking in many ways. It provided for extensive protection of subsistence, including the right to shut down the operations if NANA could show a negative impact on the subsistence resources. Among many other provisions, the agreement also mandated hiring of NANA shareholders and gave a preference in contracting for NANA businesses.

By the time the agreement with Cominco was signed, people in the NANA region started to recognize that somethings needed to change if jobs were to be created for local people. John and his executive team at NANA spent considerable time working with elders and visited all of the villages in the region to explain the agreement. These interactions were important as they changed many positions of many NANA residents on mining, which allowed Cominco to develop the Red Dog mine.

Epilogue

John grew up in a situation that western society would see as impoverished. However, his family and others instilled in him the rich cultural values of the Inupiaq. It is the understanding of and the belief in these values that drove this high school dropout to the highest level of military leadership and to leading a fledging institution to combine Inupiaq cultural values with western business practices that resulted in Red Dog being the success it has been for the NANA Region and the entire state. John was one of a kind, and Alaska is a much better place for him being able to navigate successfully in two very different cultural worlds.

John remained in Kotzebue with his wife Mary for the rest of his life. At the time of his passing, John Qipqina Schaeffer Jr. left behind his wife of 56 years, Mary, 10 children, 53 grandchildren, 100 great-grandchildren, and 6 great-great-grandchildren.

Written by John Shively, Reviewed by Tom Bundtzen

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