Art and Eskimo Power: The Life and Times of Alaskan Howard Rock

by Lael Morgan

Overview

At Howard Rock's birth, a shaman predicted that he would become a great man. Born in 1911 in a sod igloo in Point Hope, an ancient Eskimo village, Howard became an accomplished artist and crusading newspaper editor who helped to defend his people from a controversial Atomic Energy Commission proposal to excavate a harbor near his native village with an atomic blast. Art and Eskimo Power chronicles the life of this influential and artist, editor, and founder of the Tundra Times—under whose leadership the newspaper helped to organize Alaska’s native people to press their aboriginal land claims before Congress, which ultimately led to their being awarded over $1 billion and 40 million acres.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781602230217
Publisher:	University of Alaska Press
Publication date:	04/15/2008
Pages:	258
Sales rank:	1,127,961
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	14 Years

About the Author

Lael Morgan met Howard Rock in Skagway, Alaska in 1965 while she was on assignment for the Juneau Alaska Empire and he was taking the only real vacation he ever had from the Tundra Times. In addition to working for Rock under an Alicia Patterson Fellowship, she traveled the bush as a roving editor for National Geographic, continuing to fill in at the Tundra Times in emergencies.

Table of Contents

Introduction

 1 A Puzzling Prophesy

 2 The Aristocrats of the Arctic

 3 A Change of Heart

 4 Child at Odds

 5 The Cold War

 6 Adopted

 7 Better Luck

 8 A Place in the World

 9 The Beginnings of Eskimo Power

10 Evening the Score

11 Direction at Last

12 The Makings of an Artist

13 University Days

14 Big Money and Big Trouble

15 Love in Tunisia

16 Au Revoir

17 Marriage

18 A Downhill Slide

19 Home Again

20 Eskimo Versus Edward Teller

21 Fresh Start

22 Inupiat Paitot

23 Success

24 Tundra Times

25 The Search for Leadership

26 Victory in View

27 Epilogue

Notes

Index

Editorial Reviews

"As editor of the first statewide Native newspaper, Howard Rock was critical to Alaska Natives’ fight for their rights and fair settlement for their land claims.  Lael Morgan can write a story well.  Alaska historians have selected Art and Eskimo Power for inclusion in The Alaska 67:  A Guide to Alaska’s Best History Books (2006)."—Joan M. Antonson, Alaska State Historian

Joan M. Antonson

By working with Howard Rock, through excellent research and conversations with those who knew him intimately, Lael Morgan brings to life the Inupiaq hero who provided a voice for Native Alaskans when there was none."—William L. Iggiagruk Hensley, author of Fifty Miles from Tomorrow

William L. Iggiagruk Hensley

A talented though moderately successful Eskimo painter, Rock (1911-1976) gained real prominence as founding editor of the Tundra Times and for his instrumental role in the legislation of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in 1971. Rock's intriguing story merits telling, as it charts the awakening not only of a gifted, sensitive and resilient individual but of his people, while offering a ``portrait of the artist'' that is suggestively universal. Morgan ( The Aleutians ) weaves an impressive body of research into an effective novelistic format. We follow with interest the progress of a promising but assimilative art career at the University of Washington; Rock's conflict-ridden, alcohol-dependent years in Seattle and, finally, his instinctive return to Alaska in 1961. As Rock's despondency gives way to renewed ethnic pride, Morgan, without editorializing, makes clear the just irony of Rock using his Western education as a weapon in the battle to save aboriginal Alaskans threatened by economic collapse and loss of their land. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Nov.)

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