Jim was born in Crownpoint, Arizona in 1947. Before Abeita could write his name, he was drawing objects that were familiar. While still in grade school, he would stand a horse against a flat rock and trace the horse's shadow on the rock, then fill in the details. In high school in Gallup, New Mexico, and Salt Lake City, he won student art honors and later attended the American Academy of Art in Chicago, completing a two year course in nine months. In 1972, when he had been in Chicago for five years, he decided that he wanted to come home to the reservation for the uncomplicated ways. He had already painted the memories of his childhood in studies that he threw away and then was impressed when his wife fished them out of the garbage and sold them. Abeita has won major awards in Indian art shows and no longer enters many competitions.