Have you ever been there? This month marks 50 years of Alaska statehood. This mammoth state has undergone phenomenal transitions during that half century.

One observer who had a front-row seat for these rapid changes is William L. Iggiagruk Hensley. He just published “Fifty Miles From Tomorrow — A Memoir of Alaska and the Real People.” Hensley’s name reveals that he is an Inupiat, an Alaska native, once known as Eskimo.

Hensley begins: “I was born a few feet from the shores of Kotzebue Sound, 29 miles north of the Arctic Circle, 90 miles east of Russia, and 50 miles from the International Date Line, at a place shaped by the winds and waves of the Bering Sea.”

At his birth, there were about 300 residents in the village. Most were Inupiat, which translates as “the real people.” Hensley never knew his father, a Lithuanian fur trader.

His mother took them to Nome. She was an alcoholic.

Her first cousin, Fred Hensley, “found my sister and me in terrible shape — abused, malnourished, badly clothed and living in squalor.” The author recalls that when his relative “rescued my sister and me from the abuse and misery of our life in Nome, he was simply doing what a good relative would do. I don’t think he ever realized how important his compassion was.”

They returned to their village to be raised in the old ways. Hensley reflects that “I think of those early years of my life as the twilight of the Stone Age. We lived the traditional, seminomadic life our ancestors had lived for thousands of years, always engaged in the serious business of staying alive. Survival was our primary concern.”

The author re-traces a journey that took him to boarding school in Tennessee. When he returned home after college, he became involved in the movement to preserve millions of acres of land for his native people. They had occupied these lands for more than 10,000 years but lacked the documents that legitimized possession.

He had a career as a politician, business executive and tribal leader. He recalls that when he was about 40 years old there was a midlife crisis of sorts. He realized “but now I have come to a dead end. It was not a crossroads. I realized with dreadful clarity that all the political and economic activity of the past 15 years had not really brought better lives for our people.”

“Sure, we were not starving or freezing the way we used to and our health care facilities were improving. But there was a yawning pit out there, and in spite of our best efforts, we were sliding downhill, straight into it. We were becoming alcoholic or violent, committing suicide, neglecting children, beating wives and going to jail in greater numbers than ever before.”