Review by New York Times Review
THE Far North of the imagination is a cartography of cartoon proportions, made even more so by the sudden celebrity of Sarah Palin. In shorthand, Alaska is white, cold and exotic, or it's a cruise ship fantasy of fast-melting glaciers and camera-friendly caribou seen between first and second helpings at the buffet table. But every now and then someone comes along with a story that lays a serious claim to Alaskan authenticity, advancing the Outside's view of what life is really like in the Great Land. With his memoir of Alaska, the Inupiat elder William L. Iggiagruk Hensley offers a coming-of-age story for a state and a people, both still young and in the making. And while there are familiar notes in the Dickensian telling of this tale, Hensley manages to make fresh an old narrative of people who arise just as their culture is being erased - be they "Braveheart" Scotsmen or outback Aborigines. His book is also bright and detailed, moving along at a clip most sled dogs would have trouble keeping up with. Hensley's life runs from the Alaska at "the twilight of the Stone Age," as he says, to the petro-dominated modern state with its thriving native corporations and billion-dollar energy schemes. Hensley saw it all, and shaped much of it. On one level, his story is first-person history, for it was in Alaska that the government tried something radically different in settling land claims of indigenous people. Instead of reservations, natives set up regional corporations - everyone a shareholder with an initial stake of land and money in what Hensley calls "the most sweeping and fairest Native American land settlement." On a personal level, the book is riveting autobiography. Anyone who thinks times are hard now need only consider a winter spent on an ice floor under a sod roof, and the prospect of a life-or-death journey to the outhouse. "For me, Alaska is my identity, my home and my cause," he writes. "I was there, after all, before Gore-Tex replaced muskrat and wolf skin in parkas, before moon boots replaced mukluks, before the gas drill replaced the age-old tuuq we used to dig through five feet of ice to fish." Hensley was raised just north of the Arctic Circle on the shores of Kotzebue Sound. On a clear day, he probably could see Russia from his house, for it's a mere 90 miles across the Bering Strait. The international date line is 50 miles away, and hence the title. The first part of the book - to me, the most fascinating - is a depiction of the nearly lost world of a North American hunter-gatherer community. Born in 1941, Hensley was raised by his mother's cousin in a village of 300 people with no electricity, no lights, no telephones. Winter is a nine-month affair, mostly dark. Women were prized for having strong teeth, the better to crimp dried sealskins into mukluks. The perils included not just 50-below-zero weather, but random cruelties of the primitive life. An episode of botulism fermented walrus meat, a delicacy, went bad - killed Hensley's adopted father. Though it sounds harsh, Hensley writes favorably of the boy's world of hunting, fishing and exploring under the midnight sun, and the joy of having an ancient connection to a place: "There are few people in America who can say that their forebears were here 10,000 years ago. That is a powerful thing." The story of his early life reads like "Angela's Ashes" without the baroque sense of misery. The oppressors here are missionary and government do-gooders, insistent on eradicating native culture in a rush to assimilation. Hensley notes that his parents' generation was schooled by people who forced children to write "I will not speak Eskimo" 100 times on the board. At 15, Hensley was sent to Christian boarding school in Tennessee, where naturally - he learned about sex and Southern cooking. He couldn't stand the food, citing pimento cheese sandwiches in particular. An excellent student, athlete and, by his own account, boyfriend, he went on to college at George Washington University, a series of oddball jobs and a political career in a time of tumult and possibility. He became a Thomas Jefferson of sorts for native people after a vast oil field was discovered in Prudhoe Bay. Led by Hensley, natives held up the state's attempt to exploit those oil riches until aboriginal land claims were settled. The resolution came in the form of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, awarding 44 million acres of land and nearly $1 billion to the first Alaskans. It set up a series of regional corporations, some of which became Fortune 500 companies. But the rush to modern life took a big psychic toll. Alcohol, suicide, domestic violence - the familiar litany of native social ills - prompted a long journey of the soul for Hensley. As with every other episode of his life, it is told here with a Far Northern twist and an intimacy with the land and the heart. Timothy Egan's latest book, "The Worst Hard Time," won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 2006. He writes the Outposts column for NYTimes.com.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
In 1966, Hensley, then a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, began his efforts to claim 30 million acres of land for native Alaskans. Five years later, President Nixon signed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, giving Alaska Natives 44 million acres of land and $962.5 million for relinquishing claims to the rest. In the process of writing, Hensley says that he began to see that his story was that of 100,000 Alaska Natives of every tribe, spanning several generations a story of families and cultures in danger of being obliterated by change, disease, and cultural upheaval, a story of an entire people across the polar world. Hensley, who was born 29 miles north of the Arctic Circle, writes about his mother, the Inupiat people, and how he was raised by his mother's first cousin on the shores of Kotzebue Sound. The book is an invaluable record of an absorbing land and its people.--Cohen, George Copyright 2008 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
Hensley's memoir is a joyous celebration of his life among the Inuit people and of fighting for their rights. As a child, Hensley (chair, First Alaskans Inst.) was raised in a traditional manner in the Alaskan bush near Kotzebue, north of the Arctic Circle. In wonderful detail, he describes the chores, games, and hard work involved in surviving there. Hensley wrestled with an education system, both in Alaska and "Outside," that saw nothing of value in Inupiat culture. As a result, he became active in the Alaska land-claims movement, a consequence of the Statehood Act of 1959, which argued that there were no public lands in Alaska, only Native lands. He also helped organize the Northwest Alaska Native Association and the First Alaskan Institute to advocate for Native rights. President Nixon signed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act into law in 1971, awarding 44 million acres and nearly $1 billion to Alaska Natives. Hensley also played a pivotal role in renewing Inupiat language, culture, and values, which he reinforces here by using words in Inupiaq throughout the text and providing both an Inupiaq glossary and an introduction to Inupiaq writing and pronunciation. Highly recommended for public libraries.-Margaret Atwater-Singer, Univ. of Evansville Libs., IN (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by School Library Journal Review
Adult/High School-Hensley grew up in a remote Alaskan village in the early 1940s and eventually became a politician and lobbyist for Native affairs. He tells of living in a sod house with no electricity, running water, bed of his own, or medical or dental care, but of being lovingly cared for by his adoptive parents-and the whole village. His early education, conveyed through oral tradition and imbued with a deep reverence for nature, taught him the hunting and fishing skills needed for survival. In contrast, his education at the Bureau of Indian Affairs school endeavored to Americanize the students and to denigrate their heritage. Hensley later attended a Baptist boarding school in Tennessee where he was encouraged to assimilate into the Southern teen lifestyle of the time, further removing him from his beloved Inupiat heritage. With humor and pathos, the author describes his youthful experiences straddling two cultures. At George Washington University, he became interested in civil rights and advocated for Native causes. The frustrations of his people as they tried to maneuver the domestic, political, and corporate complexities of modern life in the then newly formed state are passionately revealed as Hensley details his membership in the National Congress of American Indians and the Alaskan House of Representatives. Students interested in civil rights and Alaskan history and culture will appreciate this work, as will readers of Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Little, Brown, 2007).-Jackie Gropman, formerly at Fairfax County Public Library System, Fairfax, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A longtime activist for Native rights in Alaska shares his remarkable journey. Born in 1941 near Kotzebue Sound to a Lithuanian fur trader who vanished and an Iupiaq mother who could not care for her children, Hensley was rescued from squalor by a relative and taken to live within a large traditional family in northwest Alaska. His memories of childhood are fond, even though life was extremely hard. The family lived a semi-nomadic existence, mostly "at camp" in the country near Ikkattuq, inhabiting a tiny sod house without electricity, bathroom or proximity to doctors. The summer months were spent hunting, fishing and laboring at odd jobs in order to generate the necessary stores to survive the next winter. Accidents and sudden death regularly claimed family members. At the Bureau of Indian Affairs school organized by missionaries, Hensley became aware that "the goal was to isolate [Native] children from their cultures, to cut them off from the ancient way of life and leave them stranded somewhere between the old world and the new." He made it his life's work to rectify this alienation. In the early years of statehood, his family was dispossessed from their home; the Iupiaq did not think in terms of private property and did not hold written contracts for the places they lived. Hensley plunged into political action, speaking out on the dire need for Natives to claim their land before it was seized by the government. Elected to the state legislature when he was only 25, he engaged in years of tireless lobbying that helped push Congress to pass the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, which awarded Natives 44 million acres, 16 percent of the state's territory. Modest, brave and gracious in sharing credit, Hensley has been instrumental in this history. An enlightening, affirmative look at Inuit culture and history by a devoted champion. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by School Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
