Ice Geographies: The Colonial Politics of Race and Indigeneity in the Arctic

by Jen Rose Smith

Overview

Ice animates the look and feel of climate change. It is melting faster than ever before, causing social upheaval among northern coastal communities and disrupting a more southern, temperate world as sea levels rise. Economic, academic, and activist stakeholders are increasingly focused on the unsettling potential of ice as they plan for a future shaped by rapid transformation. Yet, in Ice Geographies, Jen Rose Smith demonstrates that ice has always been at the center of making sense of the world. Ice as homeland is often at the heart of Arctic and sub-Arctic ontologies, cosmologies, and Native politics. Reflections on ice have also long been a constitutive element of Western political thought, but it often privileges a pristine or empty “nature” stripped of power relations. Smith centers ice to study race and indigeneity by investigating ice relations as sites and sources of analysis that are bound up with colonial and racial formations as well as ice geographies beyond those formations. Smith asks, How is ice a racialized geography and imaginary, and how does it also exceed those frameworks?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478028536
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	05/16/2025
Series:	Elements
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Jen Rose Smith is Assistant Professor of American Indian Studies and Geography at the University of Washington.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments  ix
Prologue: Glaciers Nowhere, Everywhere, and Somewhere  xiii
Introduction: Careful Guessing 1
1. Ice as Analytic  31
2. Ice as Data  60
3. Ice as Imaginary  84
4. Ice as Terrain  106
5. Ice Among the Stars  140
Conclusion: Ice as Soft  165
Epilogue: Ice and Emptiness  172
Notes  177
Bibliography  195
Index  221

Editorial Reviews

In this stunning book Jen Rose Smith makes visible the imperial norms that are embedded in how we think about ice geographies. She shows how these norms do the explicit and implicit work of racialization and dispossession while demonstrating that ice, which is far from neutral, sits at the center of some of the most commonly held ideas in the West about humanity, life, and history. Ice Geographies will make a major impact in Native and Indigenous studies, environmental studies, literary studies, and ethnic studies.”—Hi'ilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart, author of, Cooling the Tropics: Ice, Indigeneity, and Hawaiian Refreshment

“Jen Rose Smith’s innovative use of particularly Alaska Native but also other Indigenous literatures as a theoretical form will inspire many scholars, as will the clarity of her interdisciplinary arguments that tie how ice has been used to support projects of white supremacy and colonization. The expansiveness of Smith’s theoretical vision and the precision of her analysis make Ice Geographies a truly original work.”—Bathsheba Demuth, author of, Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait

From the Publisher

In this stunning book Jen Rose Smith makes visible the imperial norms that are embedded in how we think about ice geographies. She shows how these norms do the explicit and implicit work of racialization and dispossession while demonstrating that ice, which is far from neutral, sits at the center of some of the most commonly held ideas in the West about humanity, life, and history. Ice Geographies will make a major impact in Native and Indigenous studies, environmental studies, literary studies, and ethnic studies.

Cooling the Tropics: Ice, Indigeneity, and Hawaiian Refreshment - Hi'ilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart

Jen Rose Smith’s innovative use of particularly Alaska Native but also other Indigenous literatures as a theoretical form will inspire many scholars, as will the clarity of her interdisciplinary arguments that tie how ice has been used to support projects of white supremacy and colonization. The expansiveness of Smith’s theoretical vision and the precision of her analysis make Ice Geographies a truly original work.

Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait - Bathsheba Demuth