Brown “posit[s] the Alaskan environment as master tope not only for indigenous identity, but for native resistance as well – resistance to neocolonial imperialism in general, and to its particular manifestation in borderland signifying practices” (117). First, he “analyze[s] the manner in which signification functions as a vehicle of cultural domination” (118). This provides us with a new analytical tool. With this, he asserts that natives and their land are originally colonized in travel literature. “The romantic images of the native’s homeland that the travel writing transmits to the empire’s readership also prepares the way for colonization, constructing in the reader’s imagination an image that stimulate the settler impulse…The travel writing has similarly engineered a world creation in words, inventing the land of the indigene (if not the natives themselves) in a manner suitable for consumptions by the empire’s readership, reducing it to bite-size serotypes that conform to the prejudices and appetites of that readership” (121). Likewise, the language used to describe the land affects how the natives are seen. If the land is “barren and empty” it is available for control. If the land is wild, it implies the natives are wild and uncivilized. Finally, he says that the Alaskan environment resists signification because the snow makes it so it is difficult to differentiate the different pieces. If it cannot be differentiated, it cannot be given a signifier, Brown argues.
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