I attended the Mormon History Association meetings a couple of weeks ago in Las Vegas. Rick B did a post last week with a few summaries and comments about the conference. Here are a few of my own quick thoughts, followed by a deeper dive into the topic I found most interesting.
Quick Thoughts. There are three reasons to go to MHA or similar conferences: (1) to meet people and visit/network with the ones you know, like W&T contributors past and present who were at the conference (Rick B, Mary Ann, Kristine, and Cheryl B.); (2) to buy books from the many booksellers who run a table with their books on display, generally offering a significant discount; and (3) to hear selected presentations. So it’s a lot more than just hearing speakers present their papers.
Settler Colonialism. This is a newish topic in American History, or at least a new title for a perspective that has been around for awhile but is getting more attention recently. Here’s a quick paragraph (courtesty of Google AI) defining it.
Settler Colonialism is a foundational concept in American history that seeks to explain how European powers established permanent societies rather than just temporary trading posts. It shifts the focus from an “event” (like a specific war) to an “ongoing structure” of indigenous displacement, land theft, and racialized hierarchies.
Of course the concept applies to more than just US history. So Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, South Africa, and Australia are all open to have their histories viewed through the settler colonialism lens. The approach is productive and enlightening because the stories of the indigenous inhabitants who were invariably displaced and marginalized (whether they welcomed the new settlers or resisted them) tend to be written out of the subsequent histories.
Think of the way US history is often taught in school, where the Pilgrims landed and their descendants expanded into the wilderness, farming as they went. And how the West was settled and tamed. It’s as if the continent were empty, just waiting to be filled up with hardy immigrants from across the ocean. One can read entire chapters without encountering a Native American. This was certainly not the lived experience of those early explorers, immigrants, and settlers, for whom contact, trade, treaties, and conflict with Native Americans was a constant concern. The settler colonialism perspective seeks to put that interaction and relationship as a central theme of our US history.
I know that you find this topic fascinating, so before I look at the Mormon angle, here is another definition of settler colonialism, from Ned Blackhawk’s book The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History (Yale Univ. Press, 2023).
In the early twenty-first century, a new paradigm, “settler colonialism,” became popularized by Commonwealth scholars dissatisfied with historical frameworks that naturalize the process of Anglophone global expansion. Committed to assessing colonialism as an ongoing process, these scholars launched new methods, concepts, and historical approaches that centered upon Indigenous peoples. They called into question the founding narratives of nation-states, exposing how mythologies like the Puritan “errand into the wilderness” or the democratic nature of “frontier” settlements do more than erase Indigenous peoples — they turn history itself into nature and excise the violence of colonialism. (p. 4-5)
Mormon Settler Colonialism. Yes, Mormons are part of the story, having settled not just Utah but north, south, and west of Utah as well. And unique Mormon views (mythologies?) about Native Americans aka “Lamanites” means the Mormon Settler Colonialism story is unique and ongoing.
Which brings us to the MHA plenary presentation at the Friday luncheon by Elise Boxer. It covered material from her recent book, Mormon Settler Colonialism: Inventing the Lamanite (Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 2025). At least I think that was what she talked about, having missed the presentation myself (Dave kicks self). So I’ll have to buy the book or talk my local library into purchasing a copy. Here is a short excerpt from the publisher’s page:
In the nineteenth century, Joseph Smith, the first prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and his followers believed Indigenous peoples to be Lamanite descendants, living in a degraded state because they no longer followed God’s commandments. In Mormon Settler Colonialism, Elise Boxer investigates the racializing ideologies perpetuated about Indigenous peoples as a result of their categorization by Mormon doctrine as Lamanites.
So if you want to read about how LDS ideas about Native Americans are, in fact, “racializing ideologies perpetuated about Indigenous peoples as a result of their categorization by Mormon doctrine as Lamanites,” find a copy of the book. With a little luck, I’ll read the book myself before too long and post a review here.
So does any of this ring a bell for you?
- Did you grow up singing “Book of Mormon Stories” in Primary, complete with a variety of gestures? Do you cringe when you hear the song now?
- Regarding “Lamanites,” do you believe that “long ago their fathers came from far across the sea”? How about the suggestion (in the song) that the “Lamanites” weren’t righteous, so the land was taken from them and given to invading European settlers?
- Does your family have any experience, positive or negative, with the LDS Indian Placement Program? It ran from 1954 to about 1996, peaking in the 1960s and 1970s.
- There was, and still is, missionary outreach directed at Native Americans, from the very first years of the Church clear through today. Did anyone here serve a mission to a Native American tribe or nation?
- Regarding “Lamanite” identity, is there any clear LDS definition or statement about who is or is not a “Lamanite” today? How do LDS Native Americans in the US feel about the label? How do Central American and South American Latter-day Saints feel about the label? How do LDS Pacific Islanders feel about the label? Is it accepted or rejected?
Wheat & Tares 
From 3rd grade till graduating high school, I lived in Oklahoma. There were several Native American members for whom having “Lamanite heritage” was a big part of their testimony. (I will say I also heard some Pacific Islanders also have relationships to Lamanite heritage in their testimony. I am being facetious with this next bit, but it felt like anyone darker than caucasian but lighter than black could claim Lamanite heritage…) Granted, this was several years ago, so I don’t know if things have changed since then, but it was common enough that I didn’t think it was unusual to hear it in fast & testimony meeting.
For the most part – this is nothing more than a rehashing of issues which have been discussed, debated and reviewed ad nauseum. While I’m sure it satisfies the need in some to maximize their need to virtue signal and to publicly wring their hands at the injustice of it all. (Think “Mental Masturbation”)
Ultimately, it doesn’t change a thing – and the World rolls on. Even Nature herself is extraordinarily cruel. We’re each better off to simply carve out the best life we can; in the circumstances wherein we find ourselves
When I was is 6th grade a Navajo student joined my elementary school class. He was well liked by everyone. He returned each year until the middle of 11th grade. There were several other Navajo students in other grades during those years.
I clearly remember hearing several “pulpit pounding” talks in our ward’s sacrament meeting noting how the skin of these Lamanite students had become “lighter and lighter” as they were living closer to the gospel.
As a 7th and 8th grader I actually thought about it bit. Could their change in skin color be the receding summer suntan acquired tending sheep in Arizona just as the summer tans I and my friends had acquired playing outdoors all summer long receded during the winter months?
I concluded it probably was to less sunshine, but I never raised the question to anyone but my mother, as I had long learned not to ask those kinds questions at church.
Grizzerbears comments always virtue signal to fellow brainless conservatives that he has it right and I’m frankly tired of his pornographic self masturbation in front of us all. It does nothing but prove his degenerate nature that lacks empathy and is full of empty gestures in a world that is quickly passing him by.
Growing up, I had an aunt and uncle who hosted two young people through the Indian Placement Program. We lived far enough away that we usually saw this aunt and uncle only once every year or two, at our large summer family reunions. They are very orthodox Church members, and also two of the kindest, most patient people you’ll ever meet. They also had years of experience living among Native Americans in the Four Corners area. The details are fuzzy to me, but I believe my aunt served her mission there, much of it on reservations, and that after they married the two of them lived in that area for a time, where my uncle worked for CES–again, much of it with Native Americans on reservations.
They eventually moved to a rural community in northern Utah and raised eight kids of their own, and that’s where the two Placement Program kids stayed with them. I was young, so I’m hazy on specifics, but my impression is that it was only for a year or two. I remember seeing them at our reunions back then–and, more to the point for this topic, they have continued to be invited to, and to attend, our 4-5 day family reunions every few years, now with their own families (they’re in their 50s or 60s now). I don’t know them well personally, but the simple fact that they keep coming, and the way they interact with my aunt and uncle, tells me there are a lot of good feelings there.
I understand that others had much worse experiences, and the whole program seems strange in hindsight, but in this one instance it seems to have gone pretty well. I’d genuinely like to know more, so I’ll have to ask one of my cousins about their family’s experience with this strange Church program the next time I see them.