Early Life and Career
Morris Thompson was born on September 11, 1939 in Tanana, Alaska, the son of Warren H. Thompson, a white man originally from Indiana, and his wife Alice (née Grant), a Koyukon Athabaskan. Thompson graduated from Mt. Edgecumbe High School in Sitka and attended the University of Alaska Fairbanks as a civil engineering major. "Morrie" married Thelma Mayo of Rampart on October 5, 1963 in Tanana, then obtained a job at RCA's Gilmore Creek Satellite Tracking Station near Fairbanks in 1964 after attending an RCA electrical technician school in Los Angeles, California.
In 1966, Thompson met Walter Hickel, an Anchorage businessman who was running for governor at the time; Morris volunteered to work on Hickel's campaign in Fairbanks and the Interior. As a result Thompson became Governor Hickel's deputy director of the Rural Development Agency. The next year as executive director of Hickel's North Commission, Thompson began working on a network of transportation routes to open rural Alaska to development.
When President Nixon named Hickel to serve as Secretary of the Interior in 1969, Thompson went to Washington, D.C., as special assistant for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In 1970, young Thompson became the Bureau of Indian Affairs Area Director in Juneau. In both Interior jobs, Thompson was deeply involved in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act adopted in December 1971. Thompson served as the youngest Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs at 34 years of age.
In 1981, Morris Thompson went to work for Doyon, Limited, his ANCSA Regional Corporation. Originally hired as a Vice-President, he became Doyon's President and Chief Officer in 1985, when Doyon Ltd. had an operating loss of $28 million. When he retired in 2000, Doyon was generating $70.9 million in annual revenues, had 900 employees and 14,000 shareholders. Morris Thompson was widely recognized in Alaska as a Native American leader.
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