Pulling back the curtain: coloniality-based narratives of wilderness in US Arctic policy

ABSTRACT

Traditional readings of state-centric security in the Arctic centre questions of physical, political, and economic security as the primary issues for the eight Arctic states. These more material aspects of security, however, do not adequately explain the role of coloniality in Arctic security policies and the prevalence of coloniality-based narratives of wilderness in Arctic policy. I argue that in sustaining its ontological security in the Arctic, the United States – across the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations – uses coloniality-based narratives of wilderness to justify policy. By conducting a discourse analysis focused on ‘wilderness’ conceptualisations of American Arctic policy from 2009 to 2021, I demonstrate that the United States continues to use coloniality-based narratives to understand the Arctic and that this has serious consequences for how the United States can act in the Arctic now and in the future. As a settler colonial state, the continuation of the United States’ sense of self is intrinsically connected to coloniality, which has profound implications for Indigenous and northern peoples.

KEYWORDS:

• Neocolonialism
• ontological security
• coloniality
• wilderness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ See as examples: Bouffard, Greaves, Lackenbauer, and Teeple, “North American Arctic Security Expectations in a New U.S. Administration”; Teeple, ‘US Arctic Policy: Threats, Actors, and Outcomes’; Nash, “US Arctic Messaging in an Era of Renewed Great Power Competition”; Dean, “Arctic Ironies: American Shaping of an Arctic Regime”.

² Young, “Environmental Colonialism, Digital Indigeneity, and the Politicization of Resilience”; Gricius, “A Decolonial Approach to Arctic Security and Sovereignty”; Nicol and Chater, “North America’s Arctic Borders: A World of Change?”.

³ Youdelis et al, “Wilderness’ Revisited: Is Canadian Park Management Moving beyond the “Wilderness” Ethic?”; Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature”.

⁴ Braun, “Environmental Issues: Writing a More-than-Human Urban Geography”; Sandilands et al. “This Elusive Land: Women and the Canadian Environment”.

⁵ Coulthard, “Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition”; Alfred, “Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom”.

⁶ Prout and Howitt, “Frontier Imaginings and Subversive Indigenous Spatialities”.

⁷ Youdelis et al, “Wilderness’ Revisited”; Coulthard, “Red Skin, White Masks”; Alfred, “Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom.”; Braun, “Race, Nature, and the Politics of Difference.”

⁸ Prout and Howitt, “Frontier Imaginings and Subservise Indigenous Spatialities”; Leopold, “Wilderness as a Form of Land Use.”

⁹ Taylor, “The Rise of the American Conservation Movement: Power, Privilege, and Environmental Protection”.

¹⁰ Eichler and Baumeister, “Settler Colonialism and the US Conservation Movement: Contesting Histories, Indigenizing Futures.”

¹¹ Whitt, “Science, Colonialism, and Indigenous People: The Cultural Politics of Law and Knowledge”; Eichler and Baumeister, “Settler Colonialism and the US Conservation Movement”; Ortiz, “Indigenous Sustainability: Language, Community Wholeness and Solidarity”; Moreton-Robinson, “The White Possessive; Property, Power, and Indigenous”; Kimmerer, “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants”.

¹² Ross, “Pioneering Conservation in Alaska.”

¹³ Todd, “An Indigenous Feminist’s Take On The Ontological Turn: “Ontology” Is Just Another Word For Colonialism: An Indigenous Feminist’s Take on the Ontological Turn.”

¹⁴ Todd, “Commentary: The Environmental Anthropology of Settler Colonialism, Part I.”; Watts, “Indigenous Place-Thought and Agency amongst Humans and Non-Humans (First Woman and Sky Woman Go on a European Tour!).”

¹⁵ Eichler and Baumeister, “Settler Colonialism and the US Conservation Movement.”

¹⁶ Coulthard, “Red Skin, White Masks.”

¹⁷ Todd, “Commentary’’; Watts, “Indigenous Place-Thought and Agency amongst Humans and Non-Humans.”

¹⁸ Moreton-Robinson, “The White Possessive; Property, Power, and Indigenous”; Dunbar-Ortiz, “An Indigenous People’s History of the United States”; Burkhart, “Indigenising Philosophy through the Land: A Trickster Methodology for Decolonising – Environmental Ethics and Indigenous Futures”; Khoo, “Colonial Dispossession and Extraction: The Making of the Modern World.”

¹⁹ Ndlovu-Gatsheni, ‘Decoloniality as the Future of Africa: Decoloniality, Africa, Power, Knowledge, Being’.

²⁰ Maldonado-Torres, ‘ON THE COLONIALITY OF BEING: Contributions to the Development of a Concept’.

²¹ Mitzen, ‘Anxious Community: EU as (in)Security Community’.

²² See: Aradau, ‘Security and the Democratic Scene: Desecuritization and Emancipation’; Subotic, ‘Narrative, Ontological Security, and Foreign Policy Change’; Croft, ‘Constructing Ontological Insecurity: The Insecuritization of Britain’s Muslims’; Subotic and Steele, ‘Moral Injury in International Relations’.

²³ Chacko, ‘A New “Special Relationship”: Power Transitions, Ontological Security, and India-US Relations’.

²⁴ Vieira, ‘(Re-)Imagining the “Self” of Ontological Security: The Case of Brazil’s Ambivalent Postcolonial Subjectivity’.

²⁵ Subotic, ‘Narrative, Ontological Security, and Foreign Policy Change’; Mitzen, ‘Anxious Community: EU as (in)Security Community’.

²⁶ Steinberg, ‘U.S. Arctic Policy’.

²⁷ Youdelis et al, “Wilderness’ Revisited”.

²⁸ Khoo, “Colonial Dispossession and Extraction.”

²⁹ Eichler and Baumeister, “Settler Colonialism and the US Conservation Movement.”

³⁰ Gearan, Morello, and Hudson, “Trump administration pushed to strip mention of climate change from Arctic policy statement.”

³¹ Prout and Howitt, “Frontier Imaginings and Subversive Indigenous Spatialities.”

³² Nicol and Chater, “North America’s Arctic Borders.”

³³ Spencer, “Maritime Security Dialogue: A Conversation with Hon. Richard V. Spencer, Secretary of the Navy.”

³⁴ Braun, “Environmental Issues”; Sandilands et al. “This Elusive Land”.

³⁵ While this recent geopolitical framing is new in the context of the period of these texts, it is not broadly speaking. There is a long history of the United States in the Arctic considering great power competition, both with Russia as well as with the Soviet Union.

³⁶ Steinberg, “U.S. Arctic Policy.”

³⁷ Maldonado-Torres, “On the coloniality of being: Contributions to the Development of a Concept.”

³⁸ Khoo, “Colonial Dispossession and Extraction: The Making of the Modern World.”

³⁹ Eichler and Baumeister, “Settler Colonialism and the US Conservation Movement.”