Essays on American Indian and Mormon History

Abstract

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is one of the most successful religions to have emerged from the Second Great Awakening of the 1830s. Today it boasts a membership of over 16 million worldwide and an estimated net worth of several billion dollars. Its foundational text, the Book of Mormon, purports to be a story of the peoples of the America prior to European colonization. These peoples supposedly descended from refugees from Jerusalem who came to be divided into Nephites and Lamanites, the latter of whom bested the former and came to populate the Americas.Although Joseph Smith Jr. founded the LDS church in New York state, under his successor Brigham Young, it came to dominate Utah and the Intermountain West as part of the conceit of Manifest Destiny. The Mormon takeover of the territory of the Ute, Shoshone, Paiute, Goshute, and Navajo was as racist and ruthless as other invasions, even as it was also fraught with efforts at peace and reconciliation.This collection of essays came out of a seminar hosted by the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University in 2015. Participants “sought to make American Indians the subjects rather than the objects of discussions in relationships with Mormons.” The resulting anthology includes “personal testimonies” such as Michalyn Steele's “Sovereignty and the Corn Soup Social,” in which she describes a peaceful embrace of both Seneca and Mormon culture. It also includes case studies of “Mormonism and the Catawba Indian Nation” and “A History of the LDS Northern Indian Mission, 1964–1973.”One of the most poignant essays is “When Wakara Wrote Back” by Max Perry Mueller. Walkara was the powerful Timpanogos Ute chief and slave trader who was able to stall but not prevent Mormon takeover of the land and resources his people held. In the world that would soon overpower his, words on the page mattered more than words in the air. Walkara, who spoke several languages, came to understand this, and so he “wrote” a letter to Brigham Young: a letter of looping lines that cannot be read literally but that can be read as an attempt to “repeal a violent army of colonizers” (the Mormons) who were bent on destroying the Ute way of life.One of the most provocative essays is “The Book of Mormon as Mormon Settler Colonialism,” in which Elise Boxer denounces the LDS church as a “colonizing enterprise” and the Book of Mormon as “a powerful tool to subjugate Indigenous Peoples.” By promoting the Book of Mormon as the history of the original inhabitants of the Americas, Boxer argues, the church obliterates any Indigenous histories; by privileging Mormon settler stories, the church erases any Indigenous claims to land.In “Reclamation, Redemption, and Political Maneuvering,” Erika Bsumek interrogates the Mormon beliefs of Senator Arthur Watkins and the lawyer Ernest Wilkinson in their push for the federal termination program of the 1950s, which left several tribes stranded and at the mercy of rapacious bankers and developers. On the other hand, Farina Noelani King uncovers a tangled web of cooperation and confrontation as Hawaiian missionaries worked in Navajo country in the 1960s and 1970s. Some returned to settle there, sharing beliefs in the beauty of harmony, “Aloha in Diné Bikéyah.”In efforts to decolonize Mormonism, Thomas W. Murphy offers “Other Scriptures,” suggesting a parallel between Joseph Smith, a “seer from a colonializing society,” and Handsome Lake, a Seneca seer who created the Code, in which he attempted to simplify the spiritual practices of the Iroquois. Lori Blaine Taylor, in “Joseph Smith in Iroquois Country,” refutes the idea of a collaboration between Smith and Handsome Lake as “wishful thinking.” However, Michael B. Taylor's “In the Literature of the Lamanites,” is an invitation to consider Native writers who depicted Latter-day Saints as a way to “create more bilaterally respectful and beneficial future relationships.”How has the LDS church reframed relationships with Native Americans? The Indian Student Placement Program, ably described by Megan Stanton, has been dismantled, as has the American Indian Studies Program at BYU, which R. Warren Metcalf writes about. The LDS church is ending its ethnocentric dramas, such as the Hill Cumorah Pageant, which had been performed annually in Palmyra, New York, since 1937. And the church nowadays explains the Book of Mormon as a spiritual guide not necessarily as a literal history of American Indians.Hafen and Rensink's volume could serve as a guide for further decolonization of the LDS church. It is thick with documentation: there are seventy-three pages of endnotes. The authors are earnest and skilled in their efforts to explore the intertwined histories and experiences of Mormons and Native Americans. This is an anthology that should be widely read.