Biography
Nathan Blackwell is Diné (Navajo) of tsénjíkiní, born for bilagáana. He is a scholar of Native American and Indigenous political theory, Diné governance, racial capitalism, settler-imperialism, and Indigenous futures. His work is focused on developing and animating Indigenous political thought to build Indigenous worlds amidst and after the end of settler imperial worlds. His dissertation, “Navajos on the Warpath: Diné Future Ancestral Political Orders,” engages in an analysis of the philosophical foundations of Navajo practices of war prior to colonization to speculate on how those philosophical practices might be mobilized in the future. Through engagement with ancestral practices of war and politics, the dissertation explores how kinship, governance, and Native nationhood might be reconceptualized outside of Western practices of Liberal reproductive politics.
Nathan has published his work in Wicazo Sa Review. Prior to Columbia, Nathan received an MA in Religion from Drew University’s Theological School and a BFA in performance from the University of Colorado – Boulder.
“Navajos on the Warpath: Fugitive Ancestral Methodologies of Kin-Making and Monster-Slaying in Post-Settler Futures,” Wicazo Sa Review 38, no. 1 (2025): 73-90.