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.

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.

“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