Techno-Extractivism and Settler Circuits in Waubgeshig Rice’s Moon of the Crusted Snow
Abstract
This paper explores how the technological divide between Indigenous communities and metropolitan centers in Canada reflects underlying settler colonial assumptions about value, visibility, and futurity. National discourses that position Canada as a leader in green and technologically advanced development often rely on extractive systems (digital, ecological, and social). Corporate narratives of innovation and inclusion, particularly those centered on bridging the digital divide, tend to reproduce familiar hierarchies even as they promise connection and progress, revealing the unsustainable entanglement between settler identity and technological domination. Within this context, Moon of the Crusted Snow by Anishinaabe author Waubgeshig Rice offers a speculative space for rethinking technology, sustainability, and community. The novel’s depiction of grid collapse and systemic failure invites reflection on the dependencies embedded within Western infrastructures while highlighting Indigenous practices of kinship, land-based knowledge, and adaptability as what I call forms of world-making. This paper considers how Rice’s work suggests alternative ways of imagining futurity in the digital age.
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Szeman, Imre, and Jennifer Wenzel. “What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Extractivism?” Textual Practice, vol. 35, no. 3, 2021, pp. 505-23.
Thompson, Shirley. “Green Renewable Power and Policy in Canada: A Just Energy Transition to Net-Zero.” Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection, vol. 10, 2022, pp. 1-12.
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Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, vol. 1, no. 1, 2012, pp. 1-40.
Veracini, Lorenzo. “Introducing.” Settler Colonial Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, 2011, pp. 1-12.
Vergès, Françoise. A Decolonial Feminism. Pluto Press, 2021.
Vinson, Natiea. “The AI Landscape in Canada: A Critical Moment for First Nations.” First Nations Technology Council, 16 Apr. 2025, https://www.technologycouncil.ca/news/the-ai-landscape-in-canada-a-critical-moment-for-first-nations/. Accessed 13 Jan. 2026.
Vizenor, Gerald. Native Liberty: Natural Reason and Cultural Survivance. U of Nebraska P, 2009.
—. Survivance: Narratives of Native Presence. U of Nebraska P, 2008.
Wolfe, Patrick. “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native.” Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 8, no. 4, Dec. 2006, pp. 387-409, https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520601056240.
Young, Jason. “Environmental Colonialism, Digital Indigeneity, and the Politicization of Resilience.” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, vol. 4, no. 2, 2021, pp. 230-52.
Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. PublicAffairs, 2019.
Banivanua-Mar, Tracey and Penelope Edmonds. “Introduction: Making Space in Settler Colonies.” Making Settler Colonial Space: Perspectives on Race, Place and Identity, edited by Tracey Banivanua-Mar and Penelope Edmonds, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, pp. 1-24.
Barker, Joanne, et al. “Introduction: Catastrophe, Care and All That Remains.” Social Text, vol. 39, no. 4, Dec. 2021, pp. 27-53. Duke UP, https://doi.org/10.1215/01642
472-9408070
Breznitz, Dan. “As We Build a Vision of Canada, Let’s Make Sure It Has More Canada in It.” The Globe and Mail, 19 Oct. 2024.
Cariou, Warren, and Isabelle St-Amand. “Environmental Ethics Through Changing Landscapes: Indigenous Activism and Literary Arts.” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, vol. 44, no. 1, Mar. 2017, pp. 7-24.
Carey, Jane, and Ben Silverstein. “Thinking with and beyond Settler Colonial Studies: New Histories after the Postcolonial.” Postcolonial Studies, vol. 23, no. 1, 2020, pp. 1-20.
Ciochina, Doina. “Survival and Resistance in The Marrow Thieves and Moon of the Crusted Snow.” Canadian Literature, vol. 54, no. 1, 2025, pp. 52-66.
Cohen, Barri. “Technological Colonialism and the Politics of Water.” Cultural Studies, vol. 8, no. 1, 1994, pp. 32-55, https://doi.org/10.1080/09502389400490031.
Cornum, Lou. “The Space NDN’s Star Map.” The New Inquiry, 26 Jan. 2015, https://thenewinquiry.com/the-space-ndns-star-map/.
Couldry, Nick, and Ulises Mejias. “Data Colonialism: Rethinking Big Data’s Relation to the Contemporary Subject.” Television & New Media, vol. 20, no. 4, 2019, pp. 336-49.
Coulthard, Glen. Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. U of Minnesota P, 2014.
“Empowering Indigenous-Led Energy Sovereignty: Sacred Earth Solar.” JUST Stories, https://www.just-stories.org/database/empowering-indigenous-led-energy-sovereignty-sacred-earth-solar. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.
Humby, Clive. “Data Is the New Oil.” ANA Marketing Maestros, Association of National Advertisers, 3 Nov. 2006.
Hunt, Dallas, and Shaun Stevenson. “Decolonizing Geographies of Power: Indigenous Digital Counter-Mapping Practices on Turtle Island.” Settler Colonial Studies, vol. 7, no. 3, 2016, 372-92, https://doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2016.1186311.
Issa, Mohamad, et al. “Renewable Energy and Decarbonization in the Canadian Mining Industry: Opportunities and Challenges.” Energies, vol. 16, 2023, pp. 1-22.
Jasanoff, Sheila, and Sang-Hyun Kim. Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power. U of Chicago P, 2015.
MacArthur, Julie L., et al. “Canada’s Green New Deal: Forging the Socio-Political Foundations of Climate Resilient Infrastructure?” Energy Research & Social Science, vol. 65, 2020, pp. 1-10.
Manuel, George, and Michael Posluns. The Fourth World: An Indian Reality. U of Minnesota P, 2019.
Margulies, Morgan. “Eco-Nationalism: A Historical Evaluation of Nationalist Praxes in Environmentalist and Ecologist Movements.” Consilience: The Journal of Sustainable Development, no. 23, 2021, pp. 22-29.
Martens, Reuben. “Petromelancholia and the Energopolitical Violence of Settler Colonialism in Waubgeshig Rice’s Moon of the Crusted Snow.” American Imago, vol. 77, no. 1, Spring 2020, pp. 193-211.
McLeod, Neil. “Cree Poetic Discourse.” Indigenous Poetics in Canada, edited by Neil McLeod, Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2014, pp. 89-103.
Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. HarperOne, 1990.
Mumford, Lewis. The Myth of the Machine: Technics and Human Development. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1967.
Nye, David. American Technological Sublime. MIT Press, 1996.
O’Malley, Alana Lajoie. Workers in Canada’s Energy Future: Sociotechnical Imaginaries, Settler Colonialism, and the Coastal GasLink Pipeline. 2023. U of Ottawa, PhD dissertation.
Pingler, Marina. “The ‘Colonial Anthropocene’ Imaginary: Re-Imagining Climate Change in Waubgeshig Rice’s Moon of the Crusted Snow (2018).” Journal of the Austrian Association for American Studies, vol. 5, no. 2, 2024, pp. 142-62.
Pu-Tu, Margaret Yun. “AI Threatens Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Digital Self-Determination.” Policy Options, 22 May 2025, https://policyoptions.irpp.org/2025/05/ai-indigenous-data/.
Rice, Waubgeshig. Moon of the Crusted Snow. ECW Press, 2018.
Savic, Katarina, and Christina E. Hoicka. “Indigenous Legal Forms and Governance Structures in Renewable Energy: Assessing the Role and Perspectives of First Nations Economic Development Corporations.” Energy Research & Social Science, vol. 101, 2023, pp. 1-13, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2023.103121.
Stewart, Keith. “Building Back Better: Greenpeace Canada Policy Proposals for a Green and Just Recovery.” Greenpeace, 25 May 2020, https://www.greenpeace.org/static/planet4-canada-stateless/2020/05/1e47c7e8-building-back-better-greenpeace-canada-policy-proposal-may-25-2020.pdf.
Szeman, Imre, and Jennifer Wenzel. “What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Extractivism?” Textual Practice, vol. 35, no. 3, 2021, pp. 505-23.
Thompson, Shirley. “Green Renewable Power and Policy in Canada: A Just Energy Transition to Net-Zero.” Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection, vol. 10, 2022, pp. 1-12.
Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia. Supreme Court of Canada, 2014 SCC 44. Supreme Court of Canada, https://decisions.scc-csc.ca/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/14246/index.do.
Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, vol. 1, no. 1, 2012, pp. 1-40.
Veracini, Lorenzo. “Introducing.” Settler Colonial Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, 2011, pp. 1-12.
Vergès, Françoise. A Decolonial Feminism. Pluto Press, 2021.
Vinson, Natiea. “The AI Landscape in Canada: A Critical Moment for First Nations.” First Nations Technology Council, 16 Apr. 2025, https://www.technologycouncil.ca/news/the-ai-landscape-in-canada-a-critical-moment-for-first-nations/. Accessed 13 Jan. 2026.
Vizenor, Gerald. Native Liberty: Natural Reason and Cultural Survivance. U of Nebraska P, 2009.
—. Survivance: Narratives of Native Presence. U of Nebraska P, 2008.
Wolfe, Patrick. “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native.” Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 8, no. 4, Dec. 2006, pp. 387-409, https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520601056240.
Young, Jason. “Environmental Colonialism, Digital Indigeneity, and the Politicization of Resilience.” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, vol. 4, no. 2, 2021, pp. 230-52.
Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. PublicAffairs, 2019.
Joakin-Uzomba, I. (2026). Techno-Extractivism and Settler Circuits in Waubgeshig Rice’s Moon of the Crusted Snow. Canada and Beyond: A Journal of Canadian Literary and Cultural Studies, 15, 59–78. https://doi.org/10.14201/candb.v15i59-78
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