Research Catalog

Making Lamanites Mormons, Native Americans, and the Indian Student Placement Program, 1947-2000

Title: Making Lamanites [electronic resource] : Mormons, Native Americans, and the Indian Student Placement Program, 1947-2000 / Matthew Garrett.
Author: Garrett, Matthew, 1978-
Publication: Salt Lake City : The University of Utah Press, [2016]

Available Online

Details

Description

1 online resource (xii, 341 pages)

Summary

"Explores why many Native youth in the Indian Student Placement Program adopted a new notion of identity. From 1947 to 2000, some 50,000 Native American children left the reservations to live with Mormon foster families. The access to educational opportunities and cross cultural experiences appealed to many Navajo and other Native American families in the post-war years. Some dropped out of the Indian Student Placement Program (ISPP) program, but for others the months spent in LDS families often proved more penetrating than expected. 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. The ISPP emerged in the mid-twentieth century, championed by Apostle Spencer W. Kimball. The program 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, while 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 distinction for Native people faded in the late twentieth century"--Provided by publisher.

Uniform Title

Making Lamanites (Online)

Alternative Title

Making Lamanites (Online)

Subject

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 303-326) and index.

Access (note)

Access restricted to authorized users.

Contents

Reimagining Israel : the emergence of Mormon Indian theology and policy in the nineteenth century -- Turning to placement : the Navajo Nation, Helen John, and the pursuit of education, 1880s-1940s -- The institutional rise of the Indian Student Placement Program, 1947-1972 -- The placement experience : entering Mormon homes and communities -- The placement experience : becoming a Lamanite -- Rival ideologies and rival Indians : self-determination in the 1960s and 1970s -- Decline of the placement program, 1972-2000.

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