Willie Hensley is a well-known Inupiaq leader, but a new documentary aims to help Alaskans understand what makes him tick.
"Willie Iġġiaġruk Hensley: Homeland" will be shown in Hensley's hometown of Kotzebue this Thursday, following its premiere in Anchorage last week.
The film's producer, Marla Williams, says she could have packed it with lots of information. Instead, she uncorks a montage of moments meant to you give you a taste of Hensley's personal charm and distinctly Inupiaq sense of humor.
Williams says much has already been written about Hensley's rise as a champion for Native land rights and transformation into a statewide leader, including his own memoir "Fifty Miles from Tomorrow." She says people can always turn to this body of work to learn more, but she hopes they come away from her film with a good grasp of Hensley's character.
Williams reveals one spoiler in her documentary. She urges viewers to keep an eye out for Hensley's constantly changing appearance.
"That was really fun in this film, to look at how many different hairstyles Willie has had throughout life," Williams said. "He's gone from a flattop and a nerdy little side part — to long sixties sideburns — and now to a ponytail all the way down his back."
The film began production in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, Hensley's hair grew 18 inches, a fact confirmed by his wife, Abbe, who measured the progress of his ponytail. Williams said she worried Hensley's different looks would confuse viewers. In the end, she discovered that it was a powerful visual.
"Adaptability is his hallmark, as demonstrated by his hairstyles," Williams said. "I think he's a man of his times. He's always current. He's always looking forward, but he's not stuck in his past. He uses his past to keep him moving forward."
The documentary explores Hensley's talent for walking adeptly between two worlds — that of Native culture and the modern world of business and politics.
The film traces his roots to a sod house near Kotzebue. In the film, Hensley takes his daughter, Priscilla, on a boat trip to show her his boyhood home.
"Not a table, not a chair, not a bed. This was home," said Hensley, as he walked around pointing out the few remaining pieces of wood and mounds of sod. "It kept us warm on the coldest of days."
Hensley says he was 8 years old when his family built the home. He was the designated wood chopper and decided a plank he found on the beach would make good kindling.
"So, I chopped the bugger up, not knowing it was supposed to be our door," Hensley laughed. "We had no door that winter."
The film also takes viewers to a religious boarding school in Tennessee, where Hensley arrived as a teenager with only a shopping bag full of belongings. His classmates, with their thick Southern accents, describe how they didn't know what to make of him — and the care packages of whale meat and other subsistence foods that he received — but they were happy to have him on their football team, because he was one of the fastest on the field.
"Of course I had never seen a football, I had never seen a basketball. I had never done track, but I learned to do all of those," Hensley explains in the film.
Even as a teenager, Hensley seemed driven to make the most of the opportunities that came his way, perhaps because he knew that others were not so fortunate.
"In those days, if you're a young Inupiaq that age — if you survive TB and chicken pox, and influenza and everything else that everybody caught — you're pretty damned tough," he said.
Both of Hensley's classmates died not long after they were interviewed. They talked about their old dorm mate's tremendous work ethic and thirst for knowledge — how he would skirt the lights out policy by retreating to the bathroom, where he could be found at 2 a.m., buried in a book.
All of this was a prologue to a life of activism, which began during his college days at George Washington University. It gave Hensley a front-row seat at civil rights demonstrations in Washington, D.C.
Even when Hensley returned to Alaska for graduate school, the influence of the social justice movements of the late 1950s and early 1960s had left their mark. He immediately set out to research Native land rights and teamed up with other young Alaska Native leaders to fight successfully for the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. At 25, he also became a state legislator.
The film's theme, "Homeland," is captured in the footage by Steve Rychetnik, known in Alaska for his company, SprocketHeads. Rychetnik's colorful scenes of modern-day Kotzebue are juxtaposed with panoramas of the vast, raw beauty of the Hensley family homestead at Ikkattuq.
Rychetnik's artful use of 1960s rock and roll, powering through archival photos and films, takes the audience back to a time and place that Hensley says has a message for today's politically turbulent times.
Hensley told the audience at his Anchorage film premiere that he hopes it will remind a new generation of Alaskans about the power of unity.
"It was through just a humongous effort of people from all walks of life that came together to to really do a miraculous thing," he said. "There was nothing assured when we got started that we'd get anywhere, because what we did was unique to America."
The Hensley documentary can be viewed online in May, along with the rest of the series, which has been made possible by the Alaska Humanities Forum and the Rasmuson Foundation.
Hensley's film is the last long-form documentary in the "Magnetic North: The Alaska Character" series, which has profiled political figures including former governor Bill Sheffield and Native leaders like Jacob Adams and carver Nathan Jackson. The final episode of the series is now in post-production. It will feature a short profile of Sheila Toomey, a longtime Alaska journalist who covered the state in its formative years.
The "Magnetic North" series was originally conceived by Diane Kaplan, who recently retired as head of Rasmuson. When she started the project, Kaplan worried that too many great Alaskans would pass before their stories were told. Seven of those profiled in the Magnetic North series have died: Adams and Sheffield, as well as Vic Fischer, Roy Masden, Ed Rasmuson, Arliss Sturgulewski and Clem Tillion.
Kameron Perez-Verdia, president of the Humanities Forum, says the series has brought the community together to talk about great Alaskans and how their values shaped the state.
"I think right now in our country, these kinds of things are in threat," he said at the Anchorage premiere, as the evening closed. "I just want to encourage all of you to make sure that you're fighting for the things that we all treasure."
Copyright 2025 KNBA