Rent Fifty Miles from Tomorrow: A Memoir of Alaska and the Real People

Synopsis

Nunavut tigummiun!Hold on to the land! It was just fifty years ago that the territory of Alaska officially became the state of Alaska. But no matter who has staked their claim to the land, it has always had a way of enveloping souls in its vast, icy embrace. For William L. Iggiagruk Hensley, Alaska has been his home, his identity, and his cause. Born on the shores of Kotzebue Sound, twenty-nine miles north of the Arctic Circle, he was raised to live the traditional, seminomadic life that his Iñupiaq ancestors had lived for thousands of years. It was a life of cold and of constant effort, but Hensley's people also reaped the bounty that nature provided. In Fifty Miles from Tomorrow, Hensley offers us the rare chance to immerse ourselves in a firsthand account of growing up Native Alaskan. There have been books written about Alaska, but they've been written by Outsiders, settlers. Hensley's memoir of life on the tundra offers an entirely new perspective, and his stories are captivating, as is his account of his devotion to the Alaska Native land claims movement. As a young man, Hensley was sent by missionaries to the Lower Forty-eight so he could pursue an education. While studying there, he discovered that the land Native Alaskans had occupied and, to all intents and purposes, owned for millennia was being snatched away from them. Hensley decided to fight back.  In 1971, after years of Hensley's tireless lobbying, the United States government set aside 44 million acres and nearly $1 billion for use by Alaska's native peoples. Unlike their relatives to the south, the Alaskan peoples would be able to take charge of their economic and political destiny. The landmark decision did not come overnight and was certainly not the making of any one person. 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 also a fascinating testament to the resilience of the Alaskan ilitqusiat, the Alaskan spirit.William L. Iggiagruk Hensley is nationally revered for his tireless crusade for Native peoples' rights. Hensley worked for twenty years with the Inuit-owned NANA Regional Corporation, and is chair of the First Alaskans Institute. As a young man growing up on the shores of Kotzebue Sound, twenty-nine miles north of the Arctic Circle, William L. Iggiagruk Hensley learned to live the way his ancestors had for thousands of years. He absorbed the old stories and sayings, the threads of wisdom passed down through the generations. Though Hensley eventually left Alaska behind to pursue his education in the continental United States, he carried with him the hardiness, the good humor, and the tenacity that had helped his people flourish on the wild tundra.

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."With this book, Hensley, an Inuit who has spent much of his life advocating on behalf of the Iñupiaq, offers both a rich and engrossing narrative of his own life and a valuable resource in the effort to understand and protect the culture and history of Alaska Natives . . . Remembering his childhood, Hensley writes simply but in vivid detail of the hardships of daily life as well as of his deep love of family and traditional culture . . . From an early age, Hensley recognized the conscious efforts of educators and missionaries to 'isolate children from their cultures.' He carried this sense of injustice with him when he left Alaska to pursue his education in the Lower 48 and ultimately became an indefatigable champion of native rights . . . Hensley continues his efforts to preserve and protect his native culture with this deeply respectful and clear-eyed book . . . truly a window into the real Alaska."—Debra Ginsberg, Shelf Awareness

"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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