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

Amplifies and supports Alaska Natives' own collective continuance while refusing Leopoldian white-supremacist, settler-colonialist conservation narratives, which eliminate Indigenous Peoples.

Julianne Warren (Author)

9781009476034, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 September 2025

132 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1 cm, 0.337 kg

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.

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.

Subject Areas: International environmental law [LBBP]