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Fifty Miles from Tomorrow: A Memoir of Alaska and the Real People
by William L. Iggiagruk Hensley
Hardcover : 272 pages
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Introduction
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In 1971, after years of Hensley's tireless lobbying, the United States conveyed forty-four million acres and earmarked nearly $1 billion for use by Alaska's native peoples. The law insured that all the American Indians of Alaska would be compensated for the incursion of the U.S. government upon their way of life. Unlike their relatives to the south, the Alaskan peoples would be able to take charge of their economic and political destiny in the twentieth century and beyond.
The landmark decision did not come overnight. Neither was it the work of any one man. But it was Hensley who gave voice to the cause and made it real. Fifty Miles from Tomorrow is not only the memoir of one man; it is a testament to the resilience of the Alaskan Ilitqusiat?Native Spirit.
"Late in this illuminating memoir, the author recounts a transcendent moment. The time is 1977, the place is Barrow, Alaska, and the occasion is a whaling convention that has evolved into a momentous gathering of Inuit (the 'real people' as they call themselves) from the United States, Canada and Greenland. As William L. Iggiagruk Hensley explains, it's the first meeting of these far-flung Inuit groups since they migrated eastward from Asia 5,000 years ago. Amazingly, given the millennia of separation, they find the several versions of Inupiaq, their common language, to be mutually intelligible. Powered by linguistic euphoria, they talk and dance and, above all, sing. 'We celebrated as long as our bodies didn't fail us,' Hensley writes, 'and slept only long enough to resume the orgy of Inupiaq communication that had so long eluded us' . . . Fifty Miles From Tomorrow is an entertaining and affecting portrait of a man and his extraordinary milieu."?Dennis Drabelle, The Washington Post
"This year Alaska celebrates its 50th anniversary, so it's no coincidence that Alaska native William Iggiagruk Hensley has penned a story of his life, from growing up as an orphan in Kotzebue to living though the era of the pipeline that brought wealth to the state and economic support to the native tribes that inhabit it . . . The book offers an interesting glimpse of the first half-century of Alaska statehood."?Susan Gilmore, The Seattle Times
"On one level, this strongly written and evocative book is the story of a man, his people?the Inupiat, or 'the real people'?and their world and culture. On another, it's the story of the politics of land use and energy development. William L. Iggiagruk Hensley was born in Kotzebue, Alaska, 'twenty-nine miles north of the Arctic Circle, ninety miles east of Russia, and fifty miles from the International Date Line, a place shaped by the winds and waves of the Bering Sea.' For many of us, Alaska is a country in the mind, exerting a nearly inexplicable, magnetic pull. For Mr. Hensley, however, the relationship is organic. 'Alaska is my identity, my home, and my cause. I was there . . . before Gore-Tek replaced muskrat and wolf skin in parkas . . . before the snow machine, back when the huskies howled their eagerness to pull the sled . . . before the outboard motor showed up . . . before the telephone, when we could only speak face-to-face, person-to-person about our lives and dreams; before television intruded upon the telling and retelling of family chronicles and legends.' Mr. Hensley also came to understand the world into which he was born represented 'the twilight of the stone age,' where there were few illusions about the ability of his people to succeed, or even survive, in the culture that had swallowed them, their way of life, even the land?especially the land?on which they'd lived for centuries."?John R.
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