Once outsiders became aware of Alaska’s rich resources, the First Peoples would have as much chance of stopping the migration and exploitation as they would the Alaska rain.

Fur traders and whalers decimated animal populations; diseases and starvation decimated Native populations. A land siege ensued.

When Russia sold Alaska to the United States in 1867, the Tongass Tlingit objected, stating that the Russians could not sell what they did not own.

The U.S. claim on Alaska was followed by an influx of American adventurers, entrepreneurs, prospectors and whalers. The Organic Act of 1884 preserved the right of Alaska Natives to their homes and camps, but they were still not considered U.S. citizens and could not obtain title to land, so canneries and other businesses were established on Native lands.

After the turn of the century, President Theodore Roosevelt placed much of the timbered lands of southeast and southcentral Alaska into the Chugach and Tongass national forests. In 1915, Athabaskan leaders complained to a congressional delegate that their fishing stations and hunting lands were being disrupted by white prospectors, and that whites were trapping on their traditional trap lines. The response: They could move to homesteads or reservations.

Then, statehood happened in 1959. In Kotzebue in the Northwest Arctic, the federal Bureau of Land Management auctioned plots of land to non-Natives while the Inupiat occupants were out of town gathering food for the winter. The taking of land threatened to get worse.

Enter William L. Iggiagruk Hensley in 1966, a graduate student at University of Alaska, Fairbanks, who declared in his thesis that Alaska’s First Peoples still owned their land. They never lost their land in battle. No treaties had been signed by the U.S. and Alaska Natives. And in the act of Congress admitting Alaska into statehood, the state and its residents “disclaimed” all right and title to lands and property, including fishing rights, “held by any Indians, Eskimos or Aleuts. …”

Even Sen. Ernest Greuning, D-Alaska, in referring to a plan to dam the Yukon River to generate electric power, stated “we need to pay off the Natives” in order to develop the project on Native land.


This book recounts the post-statehood sense of urgency and hard efforts to mobilize Alaska’s Native leaders and communities to claim their land – efforts that led to formation of the Alaska Federation of Natives and the Northwest Alaska Native Association, passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, and a change in how non-Native people see the First Peoples’ relationship to land and place.

In the settlement act, Alaska’s First Peoples retained 44 million acres of land and received nearly $1 billion in payment for the rest, managed by village and regional corporations whose shareholders are eligible Alaska Natives.

“Fifty Miles from Tomorrow” has been described as part “Little House on the Prairie,” part “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” By the time Hensley, an Inupiat from Kotzebue, became involved in the fight for Native rights, he was well prepared. His childhood was spent in a harsh landscape made livable by his parents’ love; his separation from family for school abroad was made endurable by acquired knowledge that empowered him to work for his people; his militant advocacy was tempered by his ability to build consensus.

The battle wasn’t just about land.

“The cultural war against us was even more deadly,” he recalled in his book. “Generation after generation, our people were told that they were not adequate, did not measure up, and had to change from who they were into someone else. Our old religion was repressed. Our languages were virtually banned. Our dances were denounced as pagan and sinful. Our names were summarily changed.”

Hensley was elected to his first of four terms in the Alaska state House of Representatives at age 25. He served six years in the state Senate, served as AFN president, and helped found the Inuit Circumpolar Council.

The hours he poured into preserving Native land ownership and self-government had a cost. His first marriage, while he was a senator, ended in divorce. And he worried that Inupiat culture and spirit had taken a backseat to corporate and political issues.

“Now here we were, running about in a frenzy, planning and accounting and investing and managing and traveling,” he wrote. “In so doing, we were crowding out the very thing we had fought for in the first place: the consciousness of our people’s heritage, purpose and survival as a culture. It seemed to me that we had lost our way. …”

But the Inupiat culture and spirit survived. At a meeting in Kotzebue, Hensley and other Inupiat leaders took stock: Despite all that the people had endured, they had their land, their language, their art, dance and music. They had crossed over from the ancient world to the modern without losing their identity in the process.

“To me, the beauty of Inupiat values was the fact that they were not material,” he wrote. “They were deeply entrenched in the mind and heart and spirit, and entirely transportable. You can be anywhere in the world and still retain your Inupiaq identity and values.”

“Fifty Miles from Tomorrow” is an inspiring story, written by an equally inspiring man who, despite seemingly insurmountable hurdles, never lost faith that right makes might. This book is also a valuable resource about Alaska’s First Peoples, indigenous rights, and Alaska’s system of Native corporations.

Richard Walker is a correspondent reporting from San Juan Island, Wash. Contact him at rmwalker@rockisland.com.