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

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.