Edward Itta

Edward Saggan Itta was born in Utqiagvik (formerly named Barrow) in July 1945 to Noah and Mollie Itta.[3] He grew up in a family living a traditional subsistence life of fishing and hunting for seals, walrus and whales, at camps on the tundra and sea ice.

He attended Mount Edgecumbe High School a boarding school in faraway Sitka and after graduating in 1964 trained as an electronics technician at a Cleveland school and in the U.S. Navy.[3]

Itta´s first job was in Prudhoe Bay as an oil field roustabout.[3]

In the 1980s, he was director of the North Slope Borough, Alaska's Public Works department, spearheading modernization of North Slope villages water and sewer services and other amenities.[3]

From 2005 until 2011 he was Mayor of North Slope Borough, for two consecutive terms. In November 2008, he was re-elected to a second term with more than 53% of the vote.[4] He crossed political lines to meet with all sides, but took on organizations he saw as overly supportive of industry like the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation.[3]

On November 27, 2012, President Barack Obama appointed Itta to the seven-member United States Arctic Research Commission, a federal agency which functions as the government's Arctic policy and research commission.[1][5] He served on the Commission until the expiration of his term on July 29, 2015.[5]

Itta served as the President of the Inuit Circumpolar Council of Alaska, President of the Barrow Whaling Captains Association, vice chairman of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, and a representative for Alaska on the Outer Continental Shelf Policy Committee.[3]

He was married to Elsie Hopson Itta, with whom he had two children. He died after battling cancer.[3] As of 2023 he is survived by his older sister Brenda Itta (born November 13, 1943), an Iñupiaq activist and former legislator in the Alaska House of Representatives

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