🪖 Digital Colonization: The Erasure of Navajo Code Talkers from Military History Under Trump
Uncover the vital role Navajo Code Talkers played in WWII, and why their stories are vanishing online.
😽 Keepin’ It Simple Summary for Younger Readers
👧🏾✊🏾👦🏾
🪖 Navajo Code Talkers were amazing people who helped the United States during World War II by using their special language to create a secret code. 🔐 This secret code was so good that no one could figure it out. ❓ But now, stories about these Code Talkers are disappearing from the internet, which is making some people worried. 😟 It's important because these stories show how smart 🧠 and brave 💪 they were, and we don't want to forget that! 📚
🗝️ Takeaways
💡 Indigenous contributions to history, like those of the Navajo Code Talkers, are being digitally erased.
🧩 Their stories complicate simplified national narratives and prompt deeper questions.
🖥️ The removal of these histories is seen as a digital form of colonization.
📚 These histories are crucial for Indigenous youth, showing resilience and strength.
🔧 Action is needed: save, amplify, support, educate, and demand transparency regarding these erasures.
Digital Colonization: The Erasure of Navajo Code Talkers from Military History
Standing in my Three Sisters garden in the borderlands of Arizona, watching the desert bloom despite everything, I can't help but think about erasure. The prickly pear cacti push through dry soil, refusing to disappear, even as bulldozers reshape the landscape a few miles south for yet another border wall extension.
Resistencia. It's in the DNA of the desert. It's in our DNA too.
But today, I'm thinking about a different kind of erasure. One that happens with keystrokes instead of bulldozers. One that's happening right now to the legacy of Indigenous heroes who helped America win a world war.
The Digital Disappearing Act
Last week, reports emerged that articles about the renowned Navajo Code Talkers have been systematically disappearing from U.S. military websites.
At least ten articles vanished from Army and Department of Defense platforms. The URLs for these pages now end with "DEI" – a not-so-subtle indication that they were removed as part of Trump's executive order ending federal diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
¿En serio? The Navajo Code Talkers – who created an unbreakable code using their Indigenous language that helped secure America's victory in the Pacific – are now classified as "divisive" DEI content?
The irony cuts deeper than the concertina wire rusting in the wash behind my abuela's house. The same government that once tried to exterminate Indigenous languages through brutal boarding schools later desperately needed those languages to win a war. And now that same government is erasing the digital memory of that contribution.
Who Were the Navajo Code Talkers?
For those who don't know this crucial piece of American history (because it's conveniently missing from most textbooks), let me tell you about these warriors.
From 1942 to 1945, approximately 400 Navajo men served as Code Talkers in the United States Marine Corps. They developed a code using their complex Diné language – a language with no written form at that time and known by fewer than 30 non-Navajos in the world.
The Japanese, who had broken every other American code, never cracked the Navajo code. Not once.
At the Battle of Iwo Jima – one of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific – six Navajo Code Talkers worked around the clock, sending and receiving over 800 messages without a single error. Major Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division signal officer, later stated: "Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima."
These men saved countless American lives. They did this using languages the U.S. government had spent generations trying to eliminate.
Piénsalo. The same government that punished Indigenous children for speaking their native languages later begged for those languages when they needed them.
The Broader Pattern of Digital Erasure
This isn't just about the Navajo Code Talkers. The Pentagon's digital cleansing has targeted a wide range of Indigenous military contributions:
Profiles of Indigenous combat veterans from multiple states
A chronicle of Native American women who served
Stories of Indigenous service members who received religious exemptions to maintain cultural practices
Histories of the Choctaw Code Talkers from World War I
References to Comanche and Meskwaki Code Talkers
The word "Meskwaki" no longer appears on the Department of Defense website at all. Borrado completamente. And it's not just Indigenous stories disappearing – pages about Black regiments, women aviators, and other "diverse" military heroes have all been scrubbed.
All this while Indigenous Americans continue to serve in the U.S. military at a rate five times the national average – a fact that appeared in Trump's own 2018 proclamation, which has also been removed.
Colonization by Algorithm
I've spent much of my life watching the physical erasure of Indigenous presence. I've seen sacred sites bulldozed for shopping malls, ancestral lands flooded for reservoirs, and border barriers cut through tribal territories that predate both the United States and Mexico.
But this digital erasure feels like colonization 2.0 – colonization by algorithm.
When I was a kid, my grandfather would take me to the desert and point to petroglyphs carved into stone. "This is how we remember," he'd say. "When they try to make you forget who you are, these stones will still speak."
Y ahora, I wonder: What are our digital petroglyphs? What happens when history exists only on servers controlled by those who have always wanted our stories forgotten?
The Politics of Memory
Let's be crystal clear about what's happening. This isn't about removing "divisive" content or ending some nebulous "woke agenda." This is about controlling the narrative of America.
Because if Americans know the true history of the Navajo Code Talkers, they might start asking uncomfortable questions:
Why were Navajos living on reservations in the first place?
Why were Indigenous languages nearly extinct by the 1940s?
How could the same government that tried to eradicate Native cultures later rely on them for national security?
What does it mean that Indigenous people continue to serve a country that has broken nearly every treaty made with their nations?
These questions complicate the sanitized version of American history that's currently being pushed. They reveal the contradictions at the heart of American identity. They force us to reckon with ongoing colonization.
And that's precisely why these stories are being labeled "DEI" and removed.
The Impact on Indigenous Youth
For many young Indigenous students, these stories about the Code Talkers are revelatory. They show that our languages – the same ones their grandparents were beaten for speaking – helped save the world. They provide a counternarrative to the stories of defeat and victimhood that dominate mainstream accounts of Indigenous history.
Imagínate what it means for a young Navajo person to learn that their language – complex, beautiful, and resilient – was the one code that Japanese cryptographers couldn't break. Imagine what it means to know your culture wasn't just something to be "preserved" like a museum artifact but was actively instrumental in securing freedom for millions.
Now imagine what it means when the U.S. government decides that story isn't worth telling anymore.
What Can Be Done?
So what do we do now, as the digital landscape is being reshaped to exclude Indigenous contributions? How do we resist this latest form of erasure?
Document and preserve. Take screenshots. Save web pages. Archive what's being deleted. Organizations like the Internet Archive are crucial for maintaining records of what's being removed.
Amplify Indigenous voices. Support Indigenous media outlets, historians, artists, and storytellers who are documenting our histories outside of government platforms.
Contact your representatives. Demand explanations for why the stories of Code Talkers are being classified as "divisive" DEI content and removed from military websites.
Support language revitalization efforts. The Navajo language saved American lives during WWII. Now these languages need our support to survive. Organizations like the Indigenous Language Institute need funding and advocacy.
Teach the history yourself. Share the stories of the Code Talkers with your children, in your classrooms, in your communities. Create educational materials that can't be deleted with a keystroke.
Demand accountability. The Pentagon has admitted to removing DEI content but hasn't addressed whether Code Talkers fall into this category. Press for clear answers about what criteria are being used to determine which military histories remain accessible.
Finding Hope in Resistance
Despite everything, I find hope in the desert blooms outside my window. In the languages still spoken despite centuries of attempted erasure. In the young Indigenous activists reclaiming traditions and demanding justice.
The truth about the Code Talkers can't be deleted because it lives in the memories and stories of the Navajo Nation. It lives in the books written by Indigenous historians. It lives in the hearts of those who continue to speak Diné bizaad and other Indigenous languages.
As my grandmother says, they tried to bury us, but they didn't know we were seeds. Somos semillas de resistencia.
The digital erasure of Indigenous military contributions is just the latest chapter in a long history of attempted erasure. But like the petroglyphs that have withstood centuries of wind and rain, our stories will endure.
And perhaps, in their attempt to delete these histories, those in power have inadvertently drawn more attention to them. Perhaps more people will now learn about the Code Talkers than ever before. Perhaps this digital colonization will backfire, sparking a renewed interest in the Indigenous histories that have always complicated America's narrative about itself.
So let's use this moment to educate, to organize, to remember. Let's ensure that the legacy of the Navajo Code Talkers and all Indigenous veterans lives on, not just in government websites, but in our collective memory and action.
How are you fighting against historical erasure in your own community? What stories from Indigenous military history do you think more Americans should know about?
Leave a comment below and join the conversation. La lucha continúa.
This erasure is a stain on our history. We would have lost WWII without the Navajo Code Talkers. Their language was the only code the Japanese could not break. How can a democracy erase its heroes? Or anyone for that matter. There's a lot of that going on now, the same way Stalin erased people who opposed him in the Soviet Union...they no longer exist. This is outrageous.
Racism is alive and well -- thriving, in fact -- amongst the Trump team. They also seek to revise history to suit their white-supremacist narrative. Thus, notwithstanding the enormous contributions of the Navajo -- << Major Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division signal officer, later stated: "Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima." >> -- this "brave" dictator, who never served in any branch of the armed forces, now wants to obliterate mention of their role in our eventual triumph: shameful!