Whoo-shee-esh

During the course of life, the Stroller has had the privilege of meeting and, on occasion, befriending some extraordinary people.  Willie Iggiagruk Hensley is one.  The Stroller is proud to claim him as a friend.

Willie just wrote a book, ‘Fifty Miles From Tomorrow’, his autobiography.  It’s a story that defines Alaska,  who we are, where we came from and what we need to think about while charging off into the future.

The Stroller and Sages won’t go into Willie’s story, the book does it better than anything we could say.  Suffice our take with this story:

Three decades ago, the Stroller stood on a street corner in Kotzebue and watched as a young native mother and her son, maybe 7 or 8 years old, approached.  Across the street Willie Hensley emerged from a store front.  The mother grabbed her son’s hand and pulled him up short.  She pointed across the street and said to her son: “You see that man over there?  That’s Willie Hensley.  If you work really hard, some day you can be just like him.”

Whoo-shee-esh is a Tlingit word (Southeast Alaskan native), phrase actually, that, in general terms, means sharing knowledge from one generation to another.

Read the book.

Thank you Willie.

Stroller