Settler Imperialism: Alaska Natives and the Myth of the Last Frontier

How Alaska redefined US colonialism through Indigenous resistance and legal innovationLong treated as the symbolic "last frontier," Alaska was, in fact, the United States's first experiment in overseas empire.Settler Imperialism reveals these concepts as fictitious stories promoted by government officials and offers a sweeping history of Alaska Native legal and political struggle in the face of a colonial structure that defied the norms of US expansion.Examining Alaska as both a settler and imperial space, Jess Arnett challenges familiar narratives of American growth, sovereignty, and law. Following the 1867 Treaty of Cession when the United States purchased Alaska from Russia, the federal government refused to sign treaties with Alaska Natives, excluded them from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and denied the region designation as Indian Country.These departures from standard Indian policy created legal ambiguity that enabled new opportunities for land dispossession and resource extract