Catherine Servos

Beers and Story - Belchertown

Joseph Fontana

Olivewood Memorial Park

Ann Jones

Benito & Azzaro Pacific Gardens Chapel

Reid Magdanz

James Magdanz

James Nukatpiaq Sidney Magdanz left this earth and crossed to the other side on November 3, 2024 with family and friends by his side. He passed at the University of Washington Medical Center. Jim was born October 27, 1951 in Norfolk, Nebraska, the oldest child of Sid and Mary Jane Magdanz. Both his parents were raised in Nebraska farming families, and Jim spent his early years around the family farm near Pierce, Nebraska. His family later moved to Omaha, where he graduated from Westside High School in 1969. Since his teen years as staff for his high school yearbook, Jim had a keen interest in photography and journalism. He attended the University of Missouri-Columbia, where he earned a Bachelor of Journalism in 1973. His first professional job was as a newspaper photographer for the Jackson Sun in Jackson, Tennessee. He later moved to the Des Moines Register, where he worked as a staff photographer, picture editor, and editorial page editor from 1977-1981. He regularly spoke of the superb training he received there. While at the Register, he received an assignment to photograph Iñupiaq children from Shungnak visiting an Iowa dairy farm with their teacher, Bonnie Bless. That assignment changed his life. Jim was so taken with the Iñupiaq children that he arranged to visit their village soon after. That experience led him to apply for a one-year Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship to do documentary photography in Shungnak, which he received. He packed his bags, took a leave of absence from his job, and the Nebraska farm boy found himself suddenly immersed in the culture, community, and landscape of the Kuuvaŋmiut. That was 1979. Jim returned to his job after his year in Shungnak, but Des Moines was no match for the thrall of Alaska. He quit the newspaper and returned north in 1981 with no specific plan. On one of his trips to Alaska, Jim had by chance met fellow Midwesterner Denny Kelso, the director of the fledgling Division of Subsistence in the Alaska Department of Fish & Game. This fortuitous encounter led to Jim landing himself a job in Nome with the new division. Jim lived in Nome for five years, beginning his lifelong career  researching, writing, and photographing rural Alaska’s Indigenous residents, hunter-gatherer economies, and ways of life. In 1982, the Alaska State Museum in Juneau hosted a one-man show of Jim’s Shungnak photos. Jim fell in love with and in 1987 married a fellow researcher, Susan Georgette. Together they made their home in Kotzebue for the next 25 years, raising two sons, Reid and Grant, while Jim continued his work with the Division of Subsistence. Jim and Susan shared a love of the land and people of northwest Alaska, and particularly of a cabin they had on the Maniilaq River in the upper Kobuk. Jim embraced life in Kotzebue, coaching youth softball, photographing local weddings, taking passport pictures, maintaining the family home, and more. Jim retired from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in 2012 and moved to Fairbanks to enroll in the University of Alaska’s Natural Resources and Sustainability program, wanting to ensure his life’s work reached a wider audience. We often told him that he could be teaching his courses rather than taking them. He earned his PhD in 2020, writing his thesis on contemporary hunter-gatherer economies in Alaska. In Fairbanks, Jim cultivated a lively and and interesting cadre of friends, hosting Sourdough Sundays, saunas, and Snerts games that have become legendary. Jim leaves behind a huge legacy of applied and scholarly research, with several dozen technical papers and journal articles to his name. He offered an unusual combination of applied experience in resource management and rigorous academic theory. His research and presentations to the Board of Game and Board of Fish changed regulations to better accommodate traditional subsistence practices, and he engaged in groundbreaking work on traditional trade of resources, food security, and social network analysis. He was regularly asked by editors to review articles and books in his field. Jim was a man of many talents beyond his professional accomplishments. A capable pilot, he served in the Civil Air Patrol in Kotzebue for several years. He owned a Cessna 170 in the 1990s, and in recent years had purchased a Husky to begin flying again. He and Grant flew on skis to the Maniilaq River cabin in March 2023. He loved the camaraderie of the aviation community. Jim also played the piano with gusto and was a skilled tradesman, most recently helping Reid & Saagulik remodel their home in Kotzebue. He wrote a children’s book, Go Home, River, originally published in 1996. His analytical and engineering mind made him a superb builder of tarp shelters, which we appreciated on our many camping trips in northwest Alaska. He drove a jet boat with boldness and finesse, taking us to the far upper reaches of the Kobuk, Pah, and Maniilaq rivers. At the time of his death, Jim was working on a book of photos and stories from his time in Shungnak in the 1970s. He had edited a final revised version from his hospital room in Seattle. He left behind other works in progress, including a book of oral histories from upper Kobuk elders and a book of photos from Brevig Mission spring camps in the 1980s. Jim touched many lives with his kindness, generosity, and intellectual curiosity. He read and thought deeply on a wide range of topics, from financial investing to aviation technology to socioeconomic trends. He admired high quality work of any kind and expected the same from himself and others. He leaned towards precision and perfection. He reveled in interesting and intelligent discourse and had little patience for popular culture. He was reserved and understated, but at times unexpectedly witty. Most of all, he was a nurturing and loving father. Jim is survived by his sons Grant and Reid Magdanz (partner Saagulik Hensley and her children Aqattaq and Piitaq Padilla), good friend and former wife Susan Georgette, brother Chas (Charles) Magdanz and sister-in-law Cheryl Magdanz, and his nieces and nephews Heather Magdanz, Nathan Magdanz, Thea Albrecht, and their children, all of Omaha, Nebraska. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be sent to either Ilisaqativut (Iñupiaq language learners), public radio station KUAC in Fairbanks, or the Nellie Moore Alaska Native Journalism Scholarship Fund.

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James Jim Magdanz Obituary | Keeper Memorials