Some time ago, the editor at the Anchorage Press, Krestia DeGeorge, called me to ask if I would be interested in photographing Willie Hensley. I said yes and asked if there were any limitations. Krestia said no, so a few days before the photo shoot, I scouted for locations and sketched out a rough idea of what I thought might be the final image.

While photographing Willie, I thought I had loaded the camera back with color. After finishing the roll, I realized my mistake; nevertheless, this same image was chosen for the cover of Willie Hensley’s paperback book cover, Fifty Miles from Tomorrow: A Memoir of Alaska and the Real People.

Willie Hensley played a significant role in drafting the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), which set the foundation for the surface and subsurface royalties which Alaska Native Corporations received after the discovery of oil in 1968. This fascinates me now as I do research prior to crossing the Mexican border, as I have discovered a few parallels in the story of the Zapatistas and Subcomandante Marcos.