'Alaska' is Not a Blank Space: Unsettling Aldo Leopold's Odyssey

by Julianne Warren

Overview

This Element supports Gwich'in, Iñupiat, and all Alaska Natives' collective continuance and reparative justice from the perspective of a settler in the traditional territories of lower Tanana Dene Peoples. It stands with Alaska Natives' recovering and safe-keeping: kinships obstructed by settler-colonialism; ontologies and languages inseparable from land-relations and incommensurable with English-language perspectives; and epistemologies not beholden to any colonialist standard. These rights and responsibilities clash with Leopoldian conservation narratives still shaping mind-sets and institutions that eliminate Indigenous Peoples by telling bad history and by presuming entitlements to lands and norm-making authority. It models an interlocking method and methodology – surfacing white supremacist settler-colonialist assumptions and structures of Leopoldian conservation narratives – that may be adapted to critique other problematic legacies. It offers a pra xis of anti-colonialist, anti-racist, liberatory environmental-narrative critical-assessment centering Indigenous experts and values, including consent, diplomacy, and intergenerational respect needed for stable coalitions-making for climate and environmental justice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781009476034
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	08/31/2025
Series:	Elements in Indigenous Environmental Research
Pages:	75
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 1.50(h) x 9.50(d)

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Facing Decolonization; 2. Matrix of Methodology and Method; 3. Refusing Leopoldian Settler-Colonial Proposals; 4. Self-Critiquing Rote Repetition (A Redux); 5. Settler Listening as Rejoinder: Alaska Native Storytelling; 6. Conclusion: Toward Kinship; References.