Search For Spirit
By Alex DeMarban
In a unique take on an annual tradition, the father and daughter duo of Willie and ELIZABETH Hensley will share the stage for this year's Alaska Federation of Natives keynote speech.
Father of the Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act, Willie Hensley, a Kotzebue Inupiat, has long been known throughout Alaska.
He was in his 20s in the mid-1960s and a University of Alaska Fairbanks graduate student when he wrote what he calls the "little paper" that gave rise to the Native effort to own their traditional lands.
Hensley gained some national fame last year, again, thanks to something he wrote. His memoir, "Fifty Miles from Tomorrow," earned positive reviews in publications across the country, including in The New York Times.
Elizabeth, the youngest sibiling in the Hensley clan, is in her 20s. Like her dad, she has a passion for improving Native lives.
While getting her law degree recently, she helped indigenous Belize residents pursue court action to regain their traditional land.
The Hensleys recently sat down for an interview at Terra Bella coffee shop in Anchorage. They covered plenty of ground, including their upcoming speech, the memoir, and the landmark legislation that stemmed partly from Willie's work: the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act that provided Natives with 44 million acres of land.
"The values of our traditional world are still relevant, and that no matter what your economic situation is the human values that enabled our societies to be human are still relevant."
— Willie Hensley
What is your speech going to be about?
ELIZABETH: The theme of AFN talks about intergenerational dreams. So our speech will have to do with that. We are working it out. We don't want to give it away. But that's why they asked us to present together because we are of two separate generations, but we're thinking about the same issues.
WILLIE: We haven't come up with a specific presentation yet, but if you look at what has transpired in the last, say 50 years or more, there's been a huge amount of change, and life today is nothing like it was before statehood.
So I think it's going to be a little bit of a reflection of where we have been and where we have come in a lifetime and maybe a little bit of what lies ahead in order to thrive in our own environment.
A lot of people, when things go bad, they go back home, New York, California, Mississippi, wherever. But generally speaking, Alaska Natives are here.
So how are we going to continue to make a life for our communities? In my view, the histories and futures of Alaskans are intertwined, village people and urban people. There are many non-Natives who have been in Alaska for several generations and many who were here before statehood, and they know what it is like to try to make a living in this environment as well.
They recognize the many benefits that have transpired for Alaskans in the last couple of generations. But life is hard up here and the society that exists now couldn't have been done without oil. And there are no ifs, ands or buts about that. So we'll reflect on some of those issues.
ELIZABETH: And then where I come in is, yeah, sure, he can reflect on that stuff, and I will too, but what is it that current generations are born into given the history of Alaska, given statehood, given oil? And how is it that we will continue to live in a world without oil? And maybe we don't want to develop oil. Maybe we want to focus on different resources. Maybe we want to figure out a way to do things a little differently.
So what is that people of the younger generation are looking for? How do they want to build on the work that's already done, and what are the lessons we can learn from, some of the good things, but also from some of the not so good things that have happened in the past?
Her Father's Daughter
Elizabeth Hensley wants you to know she's "super-duper nervous" about giving the Alaska Federation of Native's convention keynote speech.
What about those more deserving folks who keep their village alive or overcome poverty to put food on the table each day? Their ideas are as good as hers, she says.
Granted, Hensley's appearance comes in part because AFN wanted a keynote speech that provided an intergenerational outlook on the past and future.
Thus, Hensley will share the stage with her legendary father, Willie Hensley, the lion of the Native land claims movement of the 1960s.
His life is literally an open book.
His acclaimed memoir, "Fifty Miles from Tomorrow," takes the reader from his childhood sod house in Kotzebue to the successful effort to secure Native land.
People know far less about the youngest of his seven children, who's just 26, after all. But spend a little time with Elizabeth, an Inupiaq writer and singer who just got her law degree, and you'll learn she's a deep thinker with plenty of vision for the future. She's also defiantly upbeat.
Elizabeth spent her early childhood in Kotzebue, which she still considers home.
But in part because of her father's success as a state legislator and corporate leader, Elizabeth grew up primarily in Anchorage, enjoying comforts her father didn't — a childhood house without dirt floors and with multiple educational opportunities.
Still, she hasn't escaped the suicide, alcoholism and sexual abuse that have devastated Native cultures for decades.
"If it's not you personally experiencing those things, then it's going to be your cousin, your aunt or uncle, your niece," she says.
Like her father, she wants to end the historical sadness that's causing those problems. "Our goal is the same, to create a place where people wake up in the morning happy to be alive," Elizabeth says.
Toward that end, she won a grant a few years ago — with her big sister Priscilla — to publish a small book of stories, poetry and art. The book highlighted the work of young Inuit and went to schools and organizations. It was one way to rebuild pride in a culture that missionaries and educators once wanted to wipe away. Elizabeth has also fought for indigenous land rights like her father did, though she did the work in a Central American country.
Machetes and bulldozers
In summer 2008, as an intern at the University of Arizona's law college, she traveled to Belize to help Mayan villages incorporate under the law.
Her plans changed when a developer in the village of Golden Stream began bulldozing a large area where villagers grew their crops. "It would have been like someone taking a machine gun and slaughtering the Western Arctic caribou herd," she says.
The event occurred amid a fierce battle for land playing out in Belizean courts, Hensley says. The Maya are trying to win title to their ancestral lands while developers rush to buy what they can. During the standoffs in Golden Stream, the would-be developer, a nonindigenous man, arrived with a gun and paperwork and claimed the land was his.
Villagers returned days later — after seeking government help that never came — and ordered the bulldozer to stop, machetes in hand.
Elizabeth, a witness, says no one was hurt. But the village took their claims to court, and Elizabeth collected sworn testimony from residents to prove ancestral ownership of the land. The conflict was an eye-opener, she says. At least in Alaska, Natives don't have to risk lives to protect their rights. "It makes me think we are lucky," she says. "At least a right to a tenth of our land has been recognized. In Belize, they have no recognition."
Back in Alaska these days, Elizabeth works as legislative aide for Rep. Reggie Joule, D-Kotzebue. She believes policy changes at the state and federal level could make a big difference in the lives of Natives, and she can tick off a list of them. For one thing, the state needs to recognize tribal sovereignty to give villages more local control, especially to combat crime.
But government won't bring happiness, she says. "The solution has to emanate from within ourselves and from our communities," she says. That's the same conclusion her father reached after a soul-searching period in the 1980s, according to his memoir. The economic, political and educational gains Natives had made weren't enough to stanch the longstanding cultural problems.
At the time, Willie helped organize a meeting of Inupiat leaders that led to the development of the Inupiat Ilitqusiat, or Inupiat Values.
As Willie describes it in his book, the Ilitqusiat are an Inupiaq version of the Ten Commandments. They include values such as sharing, hard work, humor, humility and respecting nature and elders.
Elizabeth tries to follow the Inupiat Ilitqusiat. "The best thing we can ask of ourselves is to live those values," she says. "If I can do that, one more person is at peace in the world."
Especially important is spending time with family or friends, and speaking Inupiat — "echoing our ancestors," she calls it.
Just saying an Inupiat word can make her feel better, she says.
"That's one of the best, quickest ways you can feel connected to who you are," she says.
Running, rock climbing, writing and singing — she's not part of a band, but has performed with musicians at public events — are also fundamental to her happiness.
Here's a song written after she had a dream about life in Kotzebue and increased ship traffi c in the area after global warming. She called it a "possible future outcome of our current conduct."
"I had a dream last night that
the waves of Kotzebue Sound ebbed and flowed
'cause a hurricane was whipping through our country.
"The people kept on like nothing was wrong this
had become normal in the long time I'd been gone
"I finally returned home to
the land crafted of my ancestors bones
to the sea to the country to place I thought I could
simply be.
"My relatives dropped me off on the side of the road
after a boat ride from fish camp
they waved like suburbanites do on TV not
like Inupiat known for great hospitality.
"I finally returned home to
the land crafted of my ancestors bones
to the sea to the country to the place I thought I could
simply be."
Where is ANCSA flawed?
ELIZABETH: The purported extinguishment of aboriginal title is a flaw. I don't think that a piece of paper can extinguish aboriginal title. Also, the failure to protect subsistence is a huge flaw. And I understand earlier drafts of the bill did protect subsistence. The fact that that was left out, I don't think that's due to any lack of advocacy by Alaska Native leaders. I think that's because of Congress.
And the fact that there's no recognition of tribal jurisdiction on ANCSA lands is a huge flaw. In order to maintain law and order a community needs to have jurisdiction over whoever is in that territory.
And (the ruling in the Venetie case) said it, there's no Indian Country in Alaska. So that issue needs to be dealt with, because crime is still a problem in the village and so are civil disputes and tribes need to have jurisdiction over law enforcement powers.
The VPSO (Village Public Safety Officer) program is a great program. It works very well in some places, but in other places there's just not an officer. Then there's no one with the jurisdiction to maintain law and order, so that's a pretty big flaw.
There are a lot of good things. Ownership of land in fee simple is huge, especially given the Cobell litigation and mismanagement of tribal monies and land by the BIA. I think it's a phenomenal thing that Alaska Natives have title in fee simple.
That's huge. We determine what happens with our land.
Also the fact that the U.S. Congress recognized one-tenth of our land claims. That's significant. In Hawaii for example there's not a whole lot of recognition for aboriginal claims, and in places around the world there's not that recognition.
I've seen the ability to make some kind of income. While its arguable that the money actually trickles down to individuals, you can see the effects of even the corporation having the money in that we can have basic infrastructure like cell towers.
In Belize, they don't even have CBs, so any time you want to have a meeting of leaders you have to send a letter on a bus, and you just have to hope that letter you put on the bus ends up in the hands of the person it was addressed to.
What do you consider to be some of ANCSA's problems?
WILLIE: Well, there may have been a better institutional arrangement out there. Besides the corporations, for sure, no one supported the notion of having a system in which some government bureaucrat was running your life. Not that we had a huge amount of experience other than the boarding school system.
The fact that we didn't have subsistence and had to come back later with ANILCA (Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act) and a rural preference, the fact that it was not our intent to eliminate Indian Country, that was a court decision. Those are some of the problems.
But at the same time, some people think we had all the latitude in the world to do this that or the other. But the reality is a lot different.
To me, some of the more negative aspects of our connection to the Western world started a hell of a lot longer in the past than ANCSA, which is within our lifetime.
And that has to do with academics, the philosophy of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, in combination with certain schools and orphanages that in reality planted the seeds of a negative self-perception by the repression of language and culture.
And if they really loved us, if they really loved us, they would have helped us learn an alphabet that would have allowed us to express ourselves in our language. But they didn't have the will or the philosophy to learn our own language and use it as a mechanism to help us develop.
ELIZABETH: What you're thinking of now, I think, is Greenland.
When the Danes were colonized, a Norwegian missionary, Hans Egerde, created an orthography and taught the Inuit there to write, so they've been recording their ancient stories since the 1700s.
A lot of Inuit could write and read before a lot of Danish folk could, so in Greenland you have almost 100 percent of the population speaking Inuit, and Danish and English.
There's a population in their 30s now, maybe late 30s that's the exception. But all other ages know their language.
So it's a drastically different approach than what happened in Alaska. It's had lasting effects. Our language in many cases is spoken by only a few people.
I was asked this week if I wanted to lead an Inupiat language circle at UAA in the evenings. I'm thinking, my God, I'm not qualified at all. I can conversationally speak somewhat, but I'm nowhere near fluent, but it will be me leading the class. If I'm leading that class, we're in dire straits here.
The process of colonization is devastating and will continue to be devastating until we have to decide for ourselves that it's worth saving these things. It's extremely unfair because we're not the ones who chose to abandon our language, and our ways and our stories. It was beaten out of people, so it's extremely unfortunate that we have to take the responsibility to bring that back. But we have to, it's the only way.
WILLIE: That's just an effort to balance the scale somewhat in so far as what has affected the Native world, and I think that this joint effort between churches and the federal government at the turn of the century and thereafter to repress every key element of the Native world, the language, ceremonies, rituals, music and dance, the expression of spirit, to me, the complications from that effort have been devastating.
And so in my mind, those effects are lingering. And the way I look at the land claims settlement was it was an 11th-hour effort to save something. It happened to be the physical world of the land, but the land in my mind represents the people and their millennia-old relationship to the land.
You're saying that negative selfperception is the most significant thing that's shaped the Native culture?
WILLIE: It's an aspect of if. If you're told your entire life that your language is forbidden, that your religion is forbidden, that your religious practices and ceremonies weren't good enough, that your dance wasn't good enough, that your potlatch wasn't good enough, that the men's house wasn't good enough, after a while some people began to believe that they weren't good enough.
Is that negative self-perception still pretty strong today?
WILLIE: It may not be as strong as it was because in earlier times there was obvious social discrimination in Alaska, where people were excluded from public facilities because they were Native.
And I think a lot of older people now who are grandparent age who remember those times very vividly in some cases would not even register to be a shareholder in the corporation because they didn't want to relive the negative experiences they had, from not being in society.
ELIZABETH: The intergenerational aspect of that would be if you have a grandparent who was told specifically that they weren't good enough and they raised children, and they had those kinds of attitudes or self-perceptions, and they raised kids and they raised kids, you have to imagine that those negative self-perceptions might transfer through the generations, unless someone makes a conscious effort to counter them.
Also, he mentioned the segregation of Alaska. It wasn't very long ago that stores had "no Native" signs up in their windows. There are lasting effects from those signs.
Maybe it's not as blatant as having a sign, but I've had someone come up to me before in Anchorage and say, "You're not Native are you?"
Yes, I am.
"But, oh you look too nice to be Native, like you're not down on Fourth Avenue drunk, you can't be Native."
So for someone to say something like that, it really does mean that people in this state believe that Native people should fit a certain inferior mold.
If you go back 30 years, there were a lot of the same problems making headlines, suicide rates, domestic violence, sexual assault, poverty.
Is it related to the negative selfperception?
WILLIE: First of all, I think 100 years ago you'd rarely find suicide.
If it was it was generally a personal decision to ensure that other people survive in your family.
I think people, despite the difficulty of their life, people loved life, they loved the experiences of living in the Arctic and I think if there's a message in the memoir that I wrote, it is that a human being can take only so much change.
And when you think about it, the world in which the Native people have existed for literally millennia, if you think of the 10,000 years as this table, the last 150 or 200 are an inch.
In that span of time everything has been turned upside down. So from a linguistic, religious, academic, institution governing, land, technology standpoint, people have no control of the world in which they existed anymore.
So in my mind, it's not hard to understand how some people struggle to make the adjustments that would seem to be necessary to have a "normal life," considering all this upheaval.
I think if there is a message in the memoir, it's that the values of our traditional world are still relevant, and that no matter what your economic situation is the human values that enabled our societies to be human are still relevant.
I would say that there's more than one way to look at our situation, and I tend to want to look at the villages as in a world in which we have plenty. We have many things and many aspects of our lives today that other Americans would love to have.
We have entrees to Western society support systems, and opportunities through regional nonprofi ts, through the tribes, through the corporations, through many institutions, and options that we never had in my lifetime in my youth.
ELIZABETH: Being told you're no good by people in positions of power, being taken to residential schools or forced into a school that said you were no good, those scenarios have lasting effects.
So when it comes to the family, which is the fundamental unit, if someone is feeling down within in the family, there's no one for them to go to get support, because there Mom's drunk or dad's drunk, or there's mom's not there or dad's not there, because of existing hurt.
So maybe that's why we see some of these high suicide rates because that safety net has been sliced and diced over the years, since before statehood.
I think there are ways to mend that, but it takes huge willpower. I've seen it happen where people turn their lives around because they were able to use the resources available, they went to ANMC (Alaska Native Medical Center), they got counseling by people who are trained to be culturally aware, they got alcohol counseling, they went to circle discussions they have there, they reached out for help.
I've seen that happen and it can happen, hopefully it will happen even more.
Elizabeth and Willie Hensley will talk about issues shared by the generations in their AFN keynote speech.
Anything you'd like to add?
ELIZABETH: I was really hesitant to accept the invitation by AFN to speak, because I know there are people in the villages who are living day to day and trying to make sure their village survives.
I haven't necessarily been doing that. I've been getting an education and I've been learning how to make a diff erence, to advocate for people as an attorney, or to advocate for people on a policy level.
I was hesitant because I'm not perfect. I'll be held up as an example of greatness or something, but I don't see myself like that at all. I'm just trying to learn, trying to think of new ways to heal old problems and new problems too.
It's a really great honor, but I'm super-duper nervous.
One of the things about coming back after getting an education, and he talked about it in his book, is the fear that you'll be perceived as trying to place yourself on a higher level than others and so it's really nerve-wracking that I will be the one on the stage. I don't want it to seem like I think I'm smarter than everyone. I think many other people have just as much or more insight to bring to the discussion.
With that said I'm really excited to speak and I hope we have something cool to say.
WILLIE: We're both honored to be invited. And there are fewer and fewer people my age who were actually at that first convention in '66.
And I guess it's an honor to still be around and be considered relevant to what's going on. I think it's a sign of AFN's interest. It had to be a board decision to invite us.
The theme of the convention is both looking back to our historical development and also looking forward, and so it's going to be a real challenge to come up with some commentary that's going to be meaningful to Native people.
At the same time I have every word that I from the most memorable speech that I gave 29 years ago. I had hoped to spend six months thinking about that particular speech. As it turned I was scribbling my notes up until the last moment.
I called it the "Spirit Speech," and as I was talking to Lizzie earlier, there are only a couple of ideas of any consequence (that I've had). There are many subsidiary things I've done, but the fi rst notion was of land and who owns it and its relevance and the challenge of what it was going to take to try to secure some control over our space. That was in the mid-60s.
And in the '80s I had the notion of a more ethereal aspect of that issue, which we maybe didn't fully recognize in '66.
That was the question of cultural spirit, and the survival of our culture and our identity and various aspects of our culture that made us unique.
In my mind, those were the two main ideas that I built my energies around. So there's the question of what are these going to look like 50 years from now.
ELIZABETH: I think one thing my generation has deep emotions about is what is it that makes us Native. When I was around 14, 15 years old, I had this huge identity crisis. I didn't feel I was Native enough. I certainly wasn't white. I went to school and I was known as the Native girl with the long hair.
So clearly other people identifi ed me as Native and I didn't know what that meant. It's taken me years of self-refl ection, but also exploring, talking to people, reading stuff , to understand that I am a Native woman.
That's a discussion my generation is having and I think people will continue to ask that as time goes on. So I think that's something I do consider and will probably speak about because it's so relevant to people of my generation today.
WILLIE: I wanted to refer to her comments and her search for identity. In essence, that is what "Fifty Miles from Tomorrow" is about. I think she mentioned the Inupiaq values that are discussed in the book and that is really something that is pervasive. It's a spiritual thing, in essence, but to me spirit is enveloped in language and food and music and dance and family and knowledge of your natural environment, of place names. As long as the essence of the spirit is here you have something to work with.
ELIZABETH: The Inuit Circumpolar Youth Council put together a language symposium in Kotzebue and we were talking about this and this ahna from upriver said, "Inuseq."
She wanted to make sure we knew that word because it means "Your spirit." Your spirit, and that's it. That's the answer to all of these things.