Podcast Summary

Episode Overview

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Christel (C)
Guest: Jen Rose Smith (B), author of Ice Geographies: The Colonial Politics of Race and Indigeneity in the Arctic (Duke UP, 2025)
Date: September 30, 2025

This episode explores Smith's new book Ice Geographies, an interdisciplinary examination of how “ice” has been imagined, instrumentalized, and racialized within Arctic contexts. Smith discusses the intersecting histories of Indigenous Alaska, settler colonialism, environmental determinism, and contemporary climate crises—unpacking the loaded meanings of ice as a symbol, analytic, material force, and site of contestation.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Book's Cover: Defamiliarizing the Arctic

• The vibrant cover (art by Darcy Bernhardt, “Beluga Hunting,” 2023) intentionally disrupts the “white, barren” stereotypes of the Arctic.
  • “It's also, again, pushing against these ideas of the Arctic being barren or empty or valueless in these kind of derogatory and very normative ways. So this piece is filled with life. It feels very abundant.” — Jen Rose Smith (05:45)
• The choice of art underscores the book’s theme that the Arctic is not merely a blank, empty, white space. Discussion about “The Arctic is Not White” article and how this inspired Smith.
• Multiple levels of symbolism, including the resemblance of the cover's color palette to the trans flag, reflecting multifaceted meanings.

Smith’s Relationship with Ice and Positionality

• Smith describes growing up in Alaska (south central), not strictly Arctic but influenced by its geographies and racial imaginaries.
• Ice shapes both migration stories of Native peoples and violent histories of racialization by U.S. and non-state actors.
  • “My positionality...has been shaped by imaginaries of ice and also like the material, physical geographies of ice.” (10:40)

The Complex Geopolitics & Racialization of Alaska

• Alaska’s unique colonial and legal history: no treaties with tribes, wholesale purchase from Russia, legal ambiguity for Alaska Native peoples (no “Indigenous” categorization until the mid-1900s).
• Racialization oscillated with classifications (e.g., Asian descent, migrants, the “10 Lost Tribes of Israel"), consistently denying full Indigenous status and associated rights.
  • “There was all of this...confusion and argument about who were Alaska Native peoples racially." (13:55)

Ice as Analytic, Data, Imaginary, Terrain

• Ice Geographies analyzes ice multidimensionally: not just environmental, but as an active mechanism in the racialization and dispossession of Indigenous peoples.
  • Ice weaponized in settler colonial law, narratives, and later, climate crisis rhetoric, often abstracting or erasing Indigenous relations.
• In climate and environmental discourse, ice becomes either an empty signifier or “loss of humanity,” with urgency often bypassing local politics and relations.
  • “Somehow ice gets kind of made vacant of those politics along the way. And so this book is working to kind of show some of those contexts that get emptied in the name of crisis.” (21:25)

Comparisons with Other Marginalized Geographies

• Parallels drawn between the Arctic and places like deserts and tropical forests—both stereotyped as barren, dangerous, or in need of protection, justifying external intervention.
• Environmental determinism and “temperate normativity” uphold hierarchies and racialize bodies via their environments.
  • “There are particular forms of spaces that are meant to produce a certain perfect body and mind...other spaces do like this kind of work in other spaces.” (25:15)

Ice, Whiteness, and White Supremacy

• Popular culture (e.g., "Ice Vikings," “Get Ready With Me” Arctic scientist TikToks) frames the Arctic as a rugged zone for white masculine conquest and adventure.
• Ice uniquely leveraged in white supremacist and nationalist mythologies, both historically and in contemporary pop culture/science narratives.
  • “Ice in these kind of most problematic versions are made to be thought of as...representative of some of the most testing materialities that masculinity can define itself against...” (34:10)
• Literary references (e.g., Frankenstein) exemplify how ice becomes a stage for explorations of masculinity and human (white, male) hubris.

Indigenous and Alternative Relations with Ice

• The book’s latter chapters and conclusion focus on resisting universalist or solely critical readings, highlighting Indigenous, everyday, and affective relations to ice.
• Introduction of “softness” and “cuteness” as counterpoints to the hard, rugged, and violent associations with ice.
  • “Ice is also that [small, soft, minor]. And what happens if all of that is true at the same time? Is it possible for us...to hold all of it at once?” (39:05)

Methods and Archives: Literature, Art, and Multiplicity

• Smith foregrounds art, poetry, and literature in her analysis for their potential to capture complexity, nuance, and lived experience.
• Literary examples, art exhibitions (e.g., works by Lorna Simpson), and poetry as evidence for multidimensional meanings of ice and its intersections with race and history.
  • “For me, the most complex...and accurate representation...happen in literature. I learn much more often from a novel than I do reading...an academic article.” (44:34)

Black and Indigenous Studies Intersections

• Smith discusses Lorna Simpson’s ice-themed artworks, refusing climate reductionism and instead focusing on racial violence.
• Encourages more cross-fertilization among Black Studies, Indigenous Studies, and Arctic Studies.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Book's Cover:
  “I also love the COVID. I've been saying that it's my favorite part of my book...Again, pushing against these ideas of the Arctic being barren or empty or valueless...this piece is filled with life.” — Jen Rose Smith (05:45)
• On Ice and Racialization:
  “My positionality...has been shaped by imaginaries of ice and also like the material, physical geographies of ice...” (10:40)
• On Environmental Determinism:
  “It's a hierarchy that gets made in and through environmental determinism...creating the less superior non white body.” (26:13)
• On White Supremacy and Ice:
  “Ice in these kind of most problematic versions are made to be thought of as...representative of some of the most testing materialities that masculinity can define itself against.” (34:10)
• On Softness and Ice:
  “I found myself falling into a trap that I had set for myself...soft, small, minor will fix everything, but that ice is also that. And what happens if all of that is true at the same time?” (39:05)
• On Literature as Archive:
  “There doesn't have to be like, one capital T truth that emerges from fiction or even from nonfiction...For me, that's where the most realistic Versions of a true experience come about.” (44:34)

Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:42 – Host welcomes Jen Rose Smith, introduces the book
• 02:18 – 06:16: Discussion of the book's cover, how it pushes against the “white Arctic” notion
• 06:55 – 11:11: Smith’s personal relationship to ice, her Alaskan background, formative memories and racialization
• 12:06 – 19:47: Alaska’s specific colonial history and Indigenous legal context; mechanisms of racialization
• 19:47 – 22:32: Ice as analytic, as data, as material and symbolic weaponization
• 24:28 – 28:36: Environmental determinism, climate imaginaries, parallels with deserts and forests
• 31:10 – 36:51: Whiteness, masculinity, and ice in culture and science
• 37:36 – 41:22: Unruliness and multiplicity of ice; archives beyond academic texts
• 42:30 – 44:19: Giving space to lived relationships; using art and literature to think differently about ice
• 47:27 – 52:24: Lorna Simpson and intersections of Black and Indigenous studies
• 53:55 – 58:43: Discussion of unruliness and playfulness in method, concludes with reading from Kathy' Teknoch Rexford's poem, “Ecology of Subsistence”
• 58:43 – End: Final reflections on the book’s capaciousness, thanks and sign off

Literary Highlight: Poem Reading (Kathy’ Teknoch Rexford, “Ecology of Subsistence”)

[53:55-58:43]
Smith reads the evocative second part of Rexford’s poem, which testifies to the vibrancy and complexity of Arctic life — aligning with Smith’s insistence on non-white, rich, lived geographies of the region.

Conclusion

Ice Geographies pushes readers to reconsider the Arctic beyond clichés of emptiness or universal crisis, foregrounding the histories, politics, and vibrant lived realities of Indigenous peoples. Jen Rose Smith’s interdisciplinary approach—drawing from literature, art, and critical studies—shows how “ice” is never neutral, but always contested terrain. The conversation is rich with examples, theory, and creative expression, offering much for scholars, students, and the general public seeking deeper understanding of Arctic geographies and their racial, indigenous, and colonial entanglements.