« Eugenics and the settler crisis: Heidi Nicholls, ‘Settler Sociology: Eugenic Responses to Imperial Crises in the 20th Century’, Sociology Lens, 2026

Settler technification: Sulagna Basu, ‘Settler militarism and technification: the case of the Navajo Code Talkers’, Australian Journal of Political Science, 2026

22May26

Abstract: This article builds on Juliet Nebolon’s conceptualisation of settler militarism (2024) to argue that settler militarism operates through the process of technification that emerges as a specific mechanism through which settler colonialism and militarisation seek to mutually constitute, legitimise, and conceal each other. By examining the Navajo Code Talkers program during the Second World War, I highlight how technification attempts to systematically transform Indigenous peoples, epistemologies, and sovereignties into technical resources that can then be militarily appropriated, operationally deployed, and rendered obsolete even as it obscures the political violence of this process under the guise of technical necessity. Crucially, through analysis of Navajo oral history interviews I contend that the process of technification must be understood as unstable, contested, and continually perturbed by Indigenous efforts to exceed, resist, and refuse its terms and the broader logics of settler colonial violence.


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