Making Lamanites: Mormons, Native Americans, and the Indian Student Placement Program, 1947-2000
by Matthew Garrett
University of Utah Press, 2016 Cloth: 978-1-60781-494-8 | eISBN: 978-1-60781-495-5 | Paper: 978-1-60781-569-3 Library of Congress Classification E97.G37 2016 Dewey Decimal Classification 970.00497
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Winner of the Juanita Brooks Prize in Mormon Studies
From 1947 to 2000, some 50,000 Native American children left the reservations to live with Mormon foster families. While some dropped out of the Indian Student Placement Program (ISPP), for others the months spent living with LDS families often proved more penetrating than expected.
The ISPP emerged in the mid-twentieth century, championed by Apostle Spencer W. Kimball, aligned with the then national preferences to terminate tribal entities and assimilate indigenous people. But as the paradigm shifted to self-determination, critics labeled the program as crudely assimilationist. Some ISPP students like Navajo George P. Lee fiercely defended the LDS Church before native peers and Congress, contending that it empowered Native people and instilled the true Indian identity; meanwhile Red Power activists organized protests in Salt Lake City, denouncing LDS colonization. As a new generation of church leaders quietly undercut the Indian programs, many of its former participants felt a sense of confusion and abandonment as Mormon distinctions for Native people faded in the late twentieth century. Making Lamanites traces this student experience within contested cultural and institutional landscapes to reveal how and why many of these Native youth adopted a new notion of Indianness.
Winner of the Francis Armstrong Madsen Best Book Award from the Utah Division of State History.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Matthew Garrett is professor of history at Bakersfield College, where he also works in the college archives. He is an editor for the college’s Roughneck Review and recently joined the editorial board of the Journal of Mormon History.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
A Note on Terminology
1. Introduction
2. Reimagining Israel: The Emergence of Mormon Indian Theology and Policy in the Nineteenth Century
3. Turning to Placement: The Navajo Nation, Helen John, and the Pursuit of Education, 1880s–1940s
4. The Institutional Rise of the Indian Student Placement Program, 1947–1972
5. The Placement Experience: Entering Mormon Homes and Communities
6. The Placement Experience: Becoming a Lamanite
7. Rival Ideologies and Rival Indians: Self-Determination in the 1960s and 1970s
8. Decline of the Placement Program, 1972–2000
9. Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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Making Lamanites: Mormons, Native Americans, and the Indian Student Placement Program, 1947-2000
by Matthew Garrett
University of Utah Press, 2016 Cloth: 978-1-60781-494-8 eISBN: 978-1-60781-495-5 Paper: 978-1-60781-569-3
Winner of the Juanita Brooks Prize in Mormon Studies
From 1947 to 2000, some 50,000 Native American children left the reservations to live with Mormon foster families. While some dropped out of the Indian Student Placement Program (ISPP), for others the months spent living with LDS families often proved more penetrating than expected.
The ISPP emerged in the mid-twentieth century, championed by Apostle Spencer W. Kimball, aligned with the then national preferences to terminate tribal entities and assimilate indigenous people. But as the paradigm shifted to self-determination, critics labeled the program as crudely assimilationist. Some ISPP students like Navajo George P. Lee fiercely defended the LDS Church before native peers and Congress, contending that it empowered Native people and instilled the true Indian identity; meanwhile Red Power activists organized protests in Salt Lake City, denouncing LDS colonization. As a new generation of church leaders quietly undercut the Indian programs, many of its former participants felt a sense of confusion and abandonment as Mormon distinctions for Native people faded in the late twentieth century. Making Lamanites traces this student experience within contested cultural and institutional landscapes to reveal how and why many of these Native youth adopted a new notion of Indianness.
Winner of the Francis Armstrong Madsen Best Book Award from the Utah Division of State History.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Matthew Garrett is professor of history at Bakersfield College, where he also works in the college archives. He is an editor for the college’s Roughneck Review and recently joined the editorial board of the Journal of Mormon History.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
A Note on Terminology
1. Introduction
2. Reimagining Israel: The Emergence of Mormon Indian Theology and Policy in the Nineteenth Century
3. Turning to Placement: The Navajo Nation, Helen John, and the Pursuit of Education, 1880s–1940s
4. The Institutional Rise of the Indian Student Placement Program, 1947–1972
5. The Placement Experience: Entering Mormon Homes and Communities
6. The Placement Experience: Becoming a Lamanite
7. Rival Ideologies and Rival Indians: Self-Determination in the 1960s and 1970s
8. Decline of the Placement Program, 1972–2000
9. Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE