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James Kivetoruk Moses was born in 1900 near Cape Espenberg at the southern entrance to Kotzebue Sound. Orphaned at a very young age, he was adopted and raised by an uncle who made a meager living by hunting and trapping. He and his uncle spent much of the winter trapping, and in the spring they would hunt seal, walrus, and oogruk (bearded seal). This schedule left little time for formal education and Moses attended school only sporadically for about two years. Hunting and trapping provided all the practical knowledge he needed to survive. When he was about 14 years old, Moses worked at the Magid Store in Deering, and during his spare time he completed a few drawings. In an interview published in 1978, Moses recalled that as soon as a drawing was finished, a white woman sent it away, possibly to Fairbanks. As Moses grew into adulthood, his ambition was to return to trapping and herding reindeer, and so he gave up his art. By the early 1930s, Moses took another trading job in Espenberg. Unable to write or keep inventories, Moses was advised to hire a secretary or bookkeeper. At the time, Bessie Ahgupuk (sister of artist George Aden Ahgupuk) was attending the White Mountain Industrial School in Shishmaref. Moses and Bessie Ahgupuk married in 1932 and she became his bookkeeper. In 1953 he was in a plane crash and one of his legs was severely injured. While recuperating in the hospital he again took up drawing. He knew that he would never be able to hunt and trap again for a living so from then on his art was his main source of income. Moses worked in various media and used paper or poster board as his canvas. Most of his works are done in a combination of pen and ink, watercolour, or oil (photographic) pencil. He used several recurring themes in his drawings, including shamans, the advent of white men in northern Alaska, and Eskimo legends. By 1978 he was in ill health and was no longer drawing.

Born: 1900
Died: 1982