Fifty Miles from Tomorrow: Willie Hensley

This is Willie Iggiagruk Hensley. I have been asked to read this passage from my recent book, Fifty Miles from Tomorrow, about current efforts to restore Iñupiat Ilitqusiat -- Iñupiat Values:

"I knew that the Iñupiaq were not a people who gave up in the face of struggle. Our people had made a life on the farthest fringe of the polar world. We had fought cold and deprivation, and through the ingenuity of the mind we had created implements and art from stone, flint, jade, ivory, bone, and wood and every usable part of the living world that helped us to survive. We had even turned snow into shelter and sod into a palace of warmth. Through trial and error, we had mastered the environment and passed on that knowledge through five hundred generations.
...
"It wasn't enough to claim our lands, we had to claim our ways of thinking, acting, and living -- the ways my mother Naungagiaq and her elderly friends and relations instilled in me, and that taught me patience, the ability to withstand pain and deprivation without self-pity, and the camaraderie of common effort. This was the true spirit of our people, and this was what was being resurrected."