Because the state was in the process of choosing which lands it would request for the 104 million acres it was allotted by the statehood bill, the young man knew he had little time to waste. He quickly returned to his home village of Kotzebue and began telling his family and friends to file claims of ownership with the federal government or risk losing forever the lands their forefathers had occupied for thousands of years.
Had William L. Iggiagruk Hensley never done anything else, his place in Alaskan history would be secure, because with this action he set off the chain of events that led, just five years later, to passage by congress of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), the bill that guaranteed permanent title of vast swaths of Alaska to its original inhabitants.
In the whole of American history, from colonial days onward, Natives of North America had never before gained such a concession from the governing powers, and without Hensley’s paper, which kick-started the land claims movement, the act may well have never even been proposed.
For Hensley, however, this proved to be just one in a long string of accomplishments. He was a key player in the development of ANCSA. He co-founded the Alaska Federation of Natives as well as the Northwest Alaska Native Association and the NANA Corporation that grew out of it. At one time or another he headed each of these three institutions. He served several terms in the state legislature. He helped organize the international Inupiat Circumpolar Council. And he has been a leader in the ongoing effort at restoring Inupiat culture and the Inupiaq language after centuries of oppression at the hands of missionaries and government officials.
Hensley would probably blush at being told this, but he is one of the towering figures in post-statehood Alaska. Were it not for his ceaseless efforts, ours would be a far different — and unquestionably far less egalitarian — state. So he’s earned some bragging rights.
Hensley isn’t one to brag, but he has chosen to share his story in “Fifty Miles from Tomorrow,” an engagingly written account of his life from his childhood in a sod hut 10 miles from Kotzebue all the way to the highest halls of power in Washington, D.C. It’s not a rags-to-riches story, however. Rather, it’s the tale of how growing up on the land, immersed in a distinctive culture, gave him the strength and the values to fight for and save what matters the most.
Hensley never knew his father, a white man, and his mother was a troubled young woman living on the edge in Nome. So his great-uncle and great-aunt, who lived a subsistence life near Kotzebue, took him in.
The first third or so of this book includes an extensive account of camp life in the early ’50s. At this time, every member of the family was expected to work as soon as they could walk, and Hensley offers vivid scenes of life in a crowded sod hut where gathering food was the primary occupation. He worked longer hours before he was 10 than most American adults would willingly put in, but he recalls his childhood fondly, and in his telling it often sounds nearly idyllic.
Hensley also attended school where he was a promising student and voracious reader. Aided by a missionary, he won admission to a Baptist high school in Tennessee, where he gained exposure to the wider world. He later attended college at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and was on hand for Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
The growing civil rights movement ignited an interest in his own culture and the ways his people had been subdued by the Europeans who had taken control of Alaska. Hensley experienced much of the anger that justifiably drove the push for equality among America’s minorities during this time, but he never became radicalized. He determined that more could be accomplished by working within the system than by fighting against it.
With this outlook he took up his fight for saving Native lands in Alaska. A consensus builder by nature, he was able to make key allies for the movement on both sides of the political aisle. The push for Native sovereignty also benefited from timing; the discovery of oil led to a land rush in Alaska, and the petroleum companies determined that a rapid settlement of Native claims would be advantageous for getting the oil fields developed. The Nixon administration was of a similar mind, and thus the historic ANCSA legislation moved quickly.
Hensley doesn’t devote much time to the particulars of ANCSA, but this topic has been well covered by others. He does, however, eloquently present the reasons why passing the act was so necessary.
Hensley reflects on numerous other aspects of his life in this book as well, but what is common throughout his story, whatever the stage, is his overall optimism. He is quite blunt about the abuse the Inupiat people have suffered, but he remains far more focused on their future than their past. It is precisely this forward-looking nature that has made him so successful and his impact so tremendous. Alaska is a far better place for having had him here. His story makes for one of the most compelling and uplifting Alaskana books of recent memory.
David A. James lives in Fairbanks.
Fifty Miles from Tomorrow: A Memoir of Alaska and the Real People
William L. Iggiagruk Hensley
Sarah Crichton Books / Farrar, Straus & Giroux
272 pages
2009
$24.00 hardback / $15.00 paperback
Joe LaRocca
North East (Erie County), PA