2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The purpose of this critical theory paper is to introduce colonialism to engineering education research and make visible the structure and processes of erasure of settler colonialism built into American engineering and engineering education. As scholars and processes of engineering education research begin to take anticolonial, postcolonial, neocolonial, and decolonial stances, it is imperative that we understand how these stances relate to different forms of colonialism so that we do not perpetuate performative actions that fail to address, resist, and deconstruct colonialism. In terms of introducing colonialism, I provide a brief comparison of the motives behind different forms of colonialism, including extractive, plantation, and settler colonialisms. I take us to Hawaiʻi, the place I am from, to connect these motives to engineering projects in the town of Kakaʻako on the island of Oʻahu. Throughout the colonial history of Hawaiʻi, the Native Hawaiian government and the United States government changed Kakaʻako to meet the needs of different colonial structures. Engineering as an industry and practice is intertwined with the colonial history of Kakaʻako, making the town an exemplary case study to illustrate the role engineering plays to maintain each type of colonialism and their interconnected nuances.

As this conference is being held in the settler colonial nation of Canada and the American Society of Engineering Education resides in the settler colonial nation of the United States that occupies the lands of Turtle Island, the rest of the paper centers settler colonialism. Settler colonialism works to replace Native land and people with settler colonial conceptions of land and a settler population. I will introduce foundational theoretical developments of settler colonialism, mainly that settler colonialism is an ongoing and persistent structure that works to replace through physical, psychological, and social processes. These processes maintain and invisibilize the structure of settler colonialism so that the consequences of settler colonialism remain hidden.

Then, I shift to Indigenous scholars who provide a more critical perspective of settler colonialism that focuses on settler colonial conceptions of the land as profit that relies on its connection to other structural oppressions. Specifically, I describe Maile Arvin’s logic of possession. The logic of possession is a setler colonial strategy of positioning Native land and people as near white so American settlers can maintain possession over Native land and people to meet a larger settler colonial agenda. Maile Arvin analyzes the ways that social sciences enact the logic of possession to possess Polynesian land and people. Following Maile Arvin, I apply the logic of possession to illustrate how engineering projects reinforce settler colonialism as well as how engineering education and engineering education research conforms to and reinforces settler colonial processes of erasure. To illustrate the inherent connection between engineering, engineering education, and engineering education research with the settler colonial logic of possession I take us back to Hawaiʻi to the island of Kahoʻolawe, a previous possession of the U.S. settler state that the U.S. used as target practice and gave back to the nation of Hawaiʻi in a state of destruction.