He was born in Casper, Wyoming, and died near Benson, Arizona. The son of a teacher and a substitute teacher, Corbett was descended from European-American settlers and Blackfoot Indians, and spent part of his childhood living on an Indian reservation.
He graduated from Colgate University and got his master"s degree in philosophy from Harvard. He took up ranching in Wyoming and Arizona and continued to herd goats and cows until his death.
He did research into beekeeping and goat husbandry. He also was librarian and philosophy instructor at Cochise College in Arizona. In 1981, while living in Arizona, he became aware of refugees fleeing from civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala.
They were crossing the border from Mexico into Arizona and seeking political asylum.
At the time, very few of these refugees were receiving protection, as the United States. government was funding the governments of the countries from which the refugees were fleeing, and immigration judges were instructed by the State Department to deny most asylum petitions. Together with other human rights activists, Corbett started a small movement in Arizona to assist these people coming across the border, by providing assistance, transportation, and shelter.
These activists, under the auspices of churches and Quaker meetings, cited religious precedent of protecting people fleeing persecution, as well as the Geneva conventions barring countries from deporting refugees back to countries in the middle of civil wars (non-refoulement), to justify their actions. They found support for their work in Quaker meetings (congregations) in Arizona and Chicago, Illinois, as well as south Texas.
Eventually, other communities in many states, including California, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington, and others
This movement, which became known as the Sanctuary movement, eventually involved over 500 congregations, and helped hundreds if not thousands of refugees find freedom in the United States.
Corbett and ten others around Tucson, Arizona were arrested for their work, as it violated United States. immigration laws. He was eventually acquitted. He continued to assist refugees and to write on various topics of social justice.
Jim Corbett is credited with helping a group of ranchers in southeast Arizona get beyond the long-standing rancor between ranchers and environmentalists and work together to protect open space in the early 1990s.
(Nature Conservancy magazine, October/November 2015, p 38).
