Fifty Miles From Tomorrow

Worth the wait
November 11, 2009

I've been waiting 50 years for this book. When I was a kid, my dad was stationed on Adak in the Aleutian Islands. The whole family went with him. My mom, as her community project, sold items created by Native Americans living in Alaska. All proceeds went to the Alaska Crippled Children's Foundation. I fell in love with the items and developed a strong curiosity about lives being lived by Eskimo kids my own age and by those of the artists who produced the strikingly beautiful art. William L. Iggiagruk, in narrating his own life, has vividly recalled growing up Eskimo in the old culture. His struggles to preserve that culture in the face of statehood and the arrival of the trans-Alaska pipeline constitute a rare tale of Indian victory. It also leaves a record of a way of life that has nonetheless largely disappeared. The issues of forging an Eskimo identity in modern Alaska, amongst people who have never been one people, are complex. We area at a point in history were preserving the ancient cultures must be done if their wisdom is to be remembered at all. This book is well written, heartbreaking and hopeful at the same time. I am eternally grateful to Mr. Iggiagruk for giving me a glimpse of the culture he has dedicated his life to preserving. I highly recommend his book.

Reviewer: P S