American Indians have long played a central role in Mormon history and its narratives. Their roles, however, have often been cast in support of traditional Mormon beliefs and as a reaffirmation of colonial discourses.

This collection of essays, many the result of a seminar hosted by the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University, explores the historical and cultural complexities of this narrative from a decolonizing perspective. Essays cover the historical construction of the “Lamanite,” settler colonialism and the Book of Mormon, and connections between the Seneca leader Handsome Lake and Joseph Smith. Authors also address American Indian Mormon tribal identities, Navajo and Mormon participation at the dedication of Glen Canyon Dam, the impact of Mormon Polynesian missionaries in Diné Bikéyah, the ISPP, and other topics. Prominent American Indian Mormon voices lend their creative work and personal experiences to the book.

With the aim of avoiding familiar narrative patterns of settler colonialism, contributors seek to make American Indians the subjects rather than the objects of discussion in relation to Mormons, presenting new ways to explore and reframe these relationships.

Volume 19, The Leonard J. Arrington Lecture Series

The Special Collections and Archives of Utah State University's Merrill-Cazier Library houses the personal and historical collection of Leonard J. Arrington, renowned scholar of the American West.

The Leonard J. Arrington Mormon History Lecture annually hosts the presentation of current research by a leading scholar. Among the lecturers have been such notable historians as Thomas G. Alexander, Richard L. Bushman, Sarah Barringer Gordon, Howard Lamar, Jan Shipps, Donald Worster, and Pulitzer Prize-winner Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.

Copublished with the Tanner Trust Fund, J. Willard Marriott Library.

Leonard Arrington is considered by many the foremost twentieth-century historian of Mormonism. He played a key role in establishing the Western History Association and the Mormon History Association, and more than a half-century after its publication, his revised doctoral dissertation, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints 1830-1900, remains a standard. But Arrington’s career was not without controversy. Gregory Prince takes an in-depth look at this respected historian and, in telling Arrington’s story, gives readers insight into the workings of the LDS Church in the late twentieth century.

In 1972, during a major reorganization of the LDS Church, Arrington was asked to serve as the official church historian, thereby becoming the first—and thus far the only—professional historian to hold that title. He immediately set out to professionalize the entire Church History Division and open its extensive archives to scholarly researching. While the output of and from that division moved Mormon studies to a new level, the shift of historiography from faith promotion ecclesiastical, to scholarly and professional research and analysis was unacceptable to a handful of powerful senior apostles. In 1980 the History Division was disassembled and moved to Brigham Young University. That led to a shift in the professionalization of the Church History Division and Archives and in Arrington’s career but not to a loss of his broad influence.

This biography is the first to draw upon the remarkable Arrington diaries (over 20,000 pages); it is supplemented by the author’s interviews of more than 100 people who knew or worked with Arrington. The book is of additional significance given continuing battles between the LDS Church and scholars, which frequently gains national attention because of excommunications of prominent intellectuals. 

Winner of the Evans Biography Award and the John Whitmer Historical Association's Brim Biography Book Award. 

Unlike most Mormon histories, Saints without Halos is a treatment of the human, rather than institutional side of Mormon history. Through the fascinating experiences of seventeen Latter-day Saints, Leonard J. Arrington and Davis Bitton sketch Mormonism from its earliest beginnings to modern times. These are Saints presented not as objects of veneration, but as "human beings who, like the rest of us, struggle to be worthy of the title Latter-day Saint." Two were apostles. One was an enthusiastic supporter and friend of Joseph Smith, who eventually left the main body of the Church to lead his own band to Texas. The other was a link in the chain of a renowned Mormon family whose positions in the leading councils of the Church span virtually the entire history of Mormonism. The other fifteen individuals, except for one colorful non-Mormon advocate, are "ordinary" Latter-day Saints-faithful members who helped realize the vision of their prophetic leaders: a personal friend of Joseph Smith, missionaries and converts, a plural wife, an Indian woman, a widowed immigrant, pioneers and philosophers, bishops and blacksmiths, and even a historian. In this book, the authors of The Mormon Experience draw on their vast knowledge of Mormon diaries and other first-hand accounts to disclose the rich diversity of Mormonism as well as its unity of purpose.