The author in front of the family's tarpaper house in Kotzebue around 1947. During the summer, the family liked to erect the white tent, which is partially in view at right, to ease the congestion in the main house. – Photo: Courtesy of Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Memoir recounts how Alaskan Natives saved their ancestral lands

By Liza Simon / Ka Wai Ola Loa

In his new memoir Fifty Miles from Tomorrow, William L. Iggiagruk Hensley writes "I was there, when the act of Congress created the fledgling state of Alaska in 1959, leaving state officials poised to steal everything away from us entirely." Hensley, who was born to an Alaskan Native mother and Lithuanian father and was raised by in the traditional seminomadic lifestyle by adoptive native parents along the Bering Sea just 25 miles from the Arctic Circle, was destined to fight the state land grab. He knew the harshness of his land, "allowing no margin for error." At age 6, he witnessed his stepfather and stepsister die after consuming a prized delicacy inadvertently tainted by bad preparation. He also knew the land's bounty and how to survive by relying on it as his ancestors had done for millennia. An education at George Washington University guided him to understand land as the key to his people's political and economic survival. While working on a master's degree at the University of Fairbanks, he wrote a seminal paper that helped clarify the legal basis of land rights of Alaskan Natives who lacked written deeds. Subsequently, he became an elected state representative and was one of a cadre of activists who engaged in intensive and protracted lobbying that in 1971 led the United States to agree to a settlement worth 44 million acres and almost $1 billion to Alaskan Natives. The most compelling part of Hensley's memoir is that he doesn't hail this as his career's crowning achievement, but only a milestone on the path to more profound realizations about the place and power of indigenous heritage in the 21st century.

Author William L. Iggiagruk Hensley. – Courtesy Photo Fifty Miles from Tomorrow: A Memoir of Alaska and the Real People By William L. Iggiagruk Hensley 272 pages Farrar, Straus and Giroux $24

Sadness envelops an older, wiser Hensley in the company of elders at a conference one night in Nome, where it becomes obvious that they have gained their land but lost sight of culture. Hensley is forced to grapple with the realization that his years of intensive political action had not done enough to preserve the indigenous way of life, including an ancient kinship with the land. Whereas others in Hensley's position may have turned bitter, he is moved to take up the cause of cultural regeneration. His memoir is a unique contribution to this effort, delivering an insider's account of a journey from an old world of communality and stewardship into a global society wracked by imperialistic legacies of "divide and conquer." At age 68, Hensley has gifted us a look at the forging of a contemporary native identity that is in the process of healing – hard-wired perhaps to survive more millennia to come. This is a story with powerful resonance. What starts out as a tale of basic physical survival ends up as a testament to the durability of bonds between land and nature and the human spirit.

The author as a boy in 1944. – Photo: Courtesy of Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Hensley tentatively plans to return to Hawai'i for an upcoming book promotion tour. Dates are pending. In the meantime, he spoke with KWO about his new memoir.

KWO: In your book, you say you lived at a "frenetic pace" and felt like "an angry young man" during your years of fighting for Alaskan Natives' land claims. What influenced you to act this manner?

WH: The way I looked at it was that our people multiplied and carried on existence and found a life in the most inhospitable climate in the North America world and distributed ourselves from the Bering Strait to Greenland. And we thrived. Then for strangers to come along and say we had no value, I couldn't accept it. While there were so few non-natives, they had a system that overwhelmed us. The federal government did this through its treaty making and began to control use of natural resources, so for fish or game we began to be required to have permits. Through the (federal Indian boarding schools), they began to control children's minds and through the missionaries they began to control the spirit world and the temporal world.

KWO: Is it fair to say that your book depicts the church as playing a leading role in the erosion Alaska's indigenous culture?

WH: I am not anti-religion. This book is really about the powerful against the powerless. And part of this was Alaska's unholy alliance between church and state that were fused in Alaska from the time of Presbyterian missionary Sheldon Jackson (in the late 1800s). The notion of putting religious and civil power in one person is a mighty big hammer. That was the beginning of a system in which both church and state were in league in terms of interest in controlling our people. This was a clear misuse of religion to debunk whatever spiritual life we had, decide that our ceremonies along with our social structure, our family rights, our music and dances and our potlatches had no value. This was a frontal assault on the things that held our society together.

William Hensley shares a moment with Naungagiaq, a member of his extended family who, he writes, 'took me in and loved me.' – Photo: Courtesy of Farrar, Straus & Giroux

KWO: You grew up 20 miles from the Artic Circle and your extended family migrated with the seasons. How did this shape your concept of native land rights?

WH: Whatever it took for a particular group to sustain itself with substantial access to protein, it claimed that area of occupancy as its space. We had 10 or 12 regions controlled by tribes, and woe to anyone who would enter into those spaces without having bloodlines or people who could vouch for them there. This was due to the sparseness of the environment. Needless, we came within the sites of countries immersed in the rhetoric of discovery and the idea you can plant a flag and claim an individual plot.

KWO: You seem to suggest in your book that statehood really stepped up the threat to native lands:

WH: For a time, federal protection was just promises and no protection. Even with the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, we had no rights to protect ourselves from mining interests in all of those gold rushes or from seafood canneries built on the rivers on which we were dependent. Everywhere were signs in public places that said 'No dogs or natives.' By the 1940s, the feds became our friend with medicine and education to stop disease and suffering, though we swallowed it at too high a cost. Meanwhile, where the feds don't like to meddle into Indian affairs, the states turn rapacious, because any state will abhor a power vacuum – or a population over which it has no control. This varies in different states, but it's a pattern I recognized in writing that little paper.

KWO: That little paper had such a big effect. Can you explain this?

WH: In a college course, I just happened to take, (the paper) brought to light a provision of Alaska's Statehood Act, which promised (the state) would disclaim title to native lands, but it never defined these lands. The same act authorized the state to select 104 million acres of land from the federal government. Natives everywhere felt we were about to lose everything. Those of us with education went out and electrified the villages with a serious plan. We used the provision (in the Statehood Act) as a legal basis to file native land claims. And we became very involved in the political process. Eventually, every nook and cranny in the state was under native claim and this led to a land claim freeze and Stewart Udall (Secretary of the Interior in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations) to come to our side and propose to withdraw the entire state of Alaska (from the union under the Taylor Grazing Act). That (act) permitted the Secretary to withdraw parcels of land for federal purposes, though I don't think it was ever designed to be this massive withdrawal of an entire state.

William Hensley, then an undergraduate student, hangs out with fellow native classmates at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1960. – Photo: Courtesy of Farrar, Straus & Giroux

KWO: In lifting the freeze on land claims, you recount the support received from the Nixon administration and from the oil companies after they discovered massive oil reserves in Prudhoe Bay. Neither entity is well known for aligning with native causes. So what accounted for so much consensus with natives in Alaska?

WH: We worked with Republicans and Democrats, because if a politician believes in justice, there is no partisan issue. There was the fact that Nixon was unpopular and looking to repeat the PR success he had when he supported giving land back to the Taos Indians and this landed him a favorable front-page story in the New York Times. Otherwise, we found many win-win situations: The oil companies were intent on finding a corridor out of Prudhoe Bay, and they didn't want leases threatened by native litigation. The state was on its last financial leg and needed the tax revenues from oil construction. Labor unions wanted the jobs. Environmentalists wanted open spaces. We wanted the land and money. It worked out all around.

KWO: Luck and hard work aside, you describe a long and drawn-out process of negotiation, which required concession from your side. Were you guided by native values?

WH: Most definitely. A native Alaskan value is avoidance of conflict. In the conditions of my early years, we learned to accommodate ourselves to the lives of others. You couldn't be the lone ranger and survive the environment.

Naungagiaq wears an atikluk, a lightweight, hooded parka, while making bags to hold sand for net weights. – Photo: Courtesy of Farrar, Straus & Giroux

KWO: Do you think the final land claims settlement was enough?

WH: Probably not. Look at how much value has been gained from Prudhoe Bay alone. Those 14 billion barrels of oil have kept Alaska financed for the last 35 years. But the reality was we could have gotten nothing.

KWO: Subsequent to the settlement, Alaskan Natives opted for a corporation model, under which tribes or regions managed their lands as a business enterprise. Your corporations are, in many ways, typical Western institutions with shareholders deriving revenue from business profits. This veered from the reservation model used by American Indians. Do you think that taking this approach marked a prudent decision?

WH: First of all, everything we receive from the Western world cuts two ways. A telephone is good, but person-to-person communication is best; alcohol is OK but not too much. We've had success and internal difficulties. The thrust of U.S. policy has been to disintegrate the lives of Indians by breaking up (land holdings). This same process dissolves the identity of the immigrant Scot or Brit or whomever. It's in the service of nationhood. But even if the corporation is a tool of Congress, we don't have to get confused by it. We want to use it make money and generate jobs. But running a corporation is not a goal in itself.

KWO: By the end of your memoir, you've refocused your energy on preventing cultural loss of Alaskan Natives and describe this as a profound transition. Do you feel that growing older has influenced this change?

WH: When I was younger, I understood the need for space in order for people to thrive and didn't have time for reflection on the spiritual connection of culture to land, but it eventually dawned on me that we did not have a philosophy. Without this, why would it matter if I worked for Exxon. We needed to get back to the values that sustained us for millennia. So we've started immersion schools in Inupiat, formed spirit camps and focused on genealogies. This is the recognition that the purpose of our efforts is to preserve our identity.

Naungagiaq with four of her eight biological children: sons Auleniq (Isaac), Ninjaugagraq (Aaron) and Tiliiktaq (William) and daughter Igvaluk (Ruby), in the 1940s. – Photo: Courtesy of Farrar, Straus & Giroux

KWO: You've visited Hawai'i enough to see firsthand similarities in the efforts to preserve native identity. Is there any particular message you would like Native Hawaiians to take away from this book?

WH: The easiest thing in the world is to lose a battle by becoming divided. The system loves that, because that way it doesn't have to do anything. The argument is: 'They can't get their act together so why get in the middle of that mess.' So we spend a lot of time trying to accommodate different interests within the native community and looking for commonalities outside.

KWO: This is your first book and it has gained national acclaim. Are you surprised?

WH: I never thought I could write a book. But I began to realize that the early life I lived didn't exist and even my children had a hard time comprehending it. It finally dawned on me that most everything written about our people had been written by a teacher, missionary, explorer, anthropologist or traveler, and all they were doing was glorifying their own experiences.