"The In/Visibility of Mormon Settler Colonialism"

This presentation takes an episodic approach to explore the formation of Mormon settler colonialism to deepen our understanding of race in the LDS Church and broadly, in the US. Mormon settler constructions of the Lamanite subject position, or indigeneity, can be useful to make sense of how Mormon settlers utilized religious ideologies to uphold Mormon possession of Indigenous peoples and lands. The presentation will begin with Joseph Smith and the publication of the Book of Mormon, continue to the Indian Student Placement Program, and end with the restoration of the Manti Temple to explore how the LDS Church operationalized and implemented policies, discourse, and structures that marked Indigenous peoples as Lamanite. My intention is to make visible the ways in which these Mormon settler colonial ideologies drove these processes that shape indigeneity historically and into the present.