bofgeography, the bow and arrow in the Book of Mormon?

[_Quasimodo]

I post this image whenever we touch on these subjects. It's before and after photos of a Navajo boy that was forcefully seperated from his family and sent to the Carlisle School.

You can tell in the first photo that his mom dressed him up in his best stuff when they came to take him away. He looks magnificent! Native Americans sure had a sense of style.

The second image shows what they did to him. They were trying to show an improvement. They tossed his fantastic jewelry and amazing clothes and dressed him "European" style. If you notice, they printed his fleshtones darkly in the first photo and his fleshtones much lighter in the second. He was becoming white and delightsome.

[_ClarkGoble]

You don't think that's an overreaction?

How much have you read about the LDS Lamanite program specifically and how the American Indians in general were treated by the United States government,especially regarding boarding school programs and programs designed to remove Indian children from their families?

I do not think Lemmie is overreacting at all.

The method of the LDS Indian placement program was to take away children from their families, teach them a new culture and religion, educate them and then send them back into a culture into which they no longer fit. We were not helping these kids or their families, we were driving a wedge between them.

Bad things are done with good intentions. That wasn't the part of I was reacting to. It was the "scam" part. I think the goal was earnestly to train people so they could adapt to the broader world. To the degree there was any force involved of course that's horrific. However often staying on reservations isn't exactly a great life either. Giving people at least the opportunity for a choice isn't a bad thing. The problem was, as you noted, some went beyond merely offering. Choice and respect for parents always has to be part of any program. Yet giving people more of a chance for a better life is something we ought be offering to anyone living in locations of poverty in the United States.

[_Fence Sitter]

Yet giving people more of a chance for a better life is something we ought be offering to anyone living in locations of poverty in the United States.

How about this?

We will take Mormon kids and make sure they get into any ivy league school they want with full tuition paid, give them any thing they want in the way of material needs like cars, clothing, food, make sure they have the best medical doctors and available to them if needed, We'll teach them a new religion and show them how to live in a different culture with a lot more opportunities.

You good with that? I mean it will train them to adapt to the broader world, one that is not limited to Mormonism and what ever limitations they face in their current lives.

It was a scam from anyone other that the faithful LDS view. We were doing this with the intention of taking away their identity. Sure there were a lot of other things involved like "better life style" and education, but we were taking away that which made them Indian. We walked into their lives with this racist notion that we could improve their lives by making them white and Mormon.

The problem here Clark is the assumption that poverty levels and living conditions are more important than family and culture. The LDS Indian placement program assumed that they were giving these kids a better life by taking away the life they had. If you read though some of those links I provided you can see we didn't really meet those goals. We certainly didn't meet our own objectives to convert Lamanites to Mormonism and, in the end, we actually we part of the problem that ended up in the passage of a Federal law to prohibit non Indians from having a say in the placement of Indian children.

[_Fence Sitter]

The more you examine the relationship between the native Americans and the LDS church, the worse off the LDS church appears.

In 1830 Joseph Smith produces a book which is based on the theory that the native American population are the remnants of a lost branch of Israelite. A book avowedly written to bring these natives back to Christianity. Inherent in this thesis is the belief that native American culture of the 1800s is sub standard, could not have been responsible for the extant archaeological remains and that Christianity is a superior belief than their own religious practices.

Joseph Smith takes several steps to try and convert the American Indians to Mormonism, all of which fail, some of which include receiving a revelation from God which instructs him to send married Mormon men to the Indians to take additional wives.

Verily I say unto you that the wisdom of man in his fallen state, knoweth not the purposes and the privileges of my holy priesthood. but ye shall know when ye receive a fulness by reason of the anointing: For it is my will, that in time, ye should take unto you wives of the Lamanites and Nephites, that their posterity may become white, delightsome and Just, for even now their females are more virtuous than the gentiles.

Fast forward to 1850's and Mormon immigrants invading the Great Basin. Upon arrival there they find a thriving Indian population dependent on hunting and fishing for the most part. Within 50 years the native populations have been decimated and driven from their native habitations to reservations by a culture who believe in the Book of Mormon, a book specifically brought forth by God to save the very people being destroyed by the Mormon immigrants.

So now in the 1950's these same Mormons under the guidance of living prophets, feeling sorry for the conditions of these poor Indians having to live on the very reservations they forced them to live on, offer them the chance to improve their children's lives (why bother with the parents after all) by taking them away from that awful reservation and teaching them how to be white and Mormon.

Well at least we can feel better about what we did because it was all done with good intentions and because, dangit, God wants us to save these poor savages from themselves.

[_Themis]

The standard apologetic view of destruction is to just say the Book of Mormon ought be judged by the standards to which it purports to be. That is an ancient document. Most ancient documents exaggerate military success/loss and say things are totally destroyed when they aren't. In any case if there were others in the land then the Jaredites could have been mixing with them. We know the muelikites coexisted with them for a time without knowing as did the Nephites. To Lamanite mixing, the Nephites didn't know what the Lamanites were doing the first few hundred years. So most likely that would explain populations. Plus of course we don't have the 116 pages and don't know what was written New Testament those.

Asking why the text doesn't mention other groups is judging it by what it purports to be. No one is asking if ancient texts may exaggerate or lie about themselves or other groups. The Bible is a classic example of an ancient text which mention other groups all the time, even though we expect some writer will make themselves and their group look good and other groups look bad. The Book of Mormon fails this test miserably from the limited geography model.

[_tapirrider]

Bofmormongeography, please tell us about the bow and arrow among the Hopewell culture during the time that it wasn't there.

[_Choyo Chagas]

...
If you notice, they printed his fleshtones darkly in the first photo and his fleshtones much lighter in the second. He was becoming white and delightsome.

early photoshop
stalin did it decades before

-

the ways of Mormon god sometimes are not varying from earthly ones - stalin, Hitler (and ceausescu if i may be more specific)

by the way this book is worth to read
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' Indian Student Placement Service: A History)

[_tapirrider]

bofmormongeography, please answer this question about the bow and arrow.

[_ClarkGoble]

Yet giving people more of a chance for a better life is something we ought be offering to anyone living in locations of poverty in the United States.

How about this?

We will take Mormon kids and make sure they get into any ivy league school they want with full tuition paid, give them any thing they want in the way of material needs like cars, clothing, food, make sure they have the best medical doctors and available to them if needed, We'll teach them a new religion and show them how to live in a different culture with a lot more opportunities.

You good with that? I mean it will train them to adapt to the broader world, one that is not limited to Mormonism and what ever limitations they face in their current lives.

So long as it was the parents choice I'd have no problem with that.

[_tapirrider]

Yet giving people more of a chance for a better life is something we ought be offering to anyone living in locations of poverty in the United States.

How about this?

We will take Mormon kids and make sure they get into any ivy league school they want with full tuition paid, give them any thing they want in the way of material needs like cars, clothing, food, make sure they have the best medical doctors and available to them if needed, We'll teach them a new religion and show them how to live in a different culture with a lot more opportunities.

You good with that? I mean it will train them to adapt to the broader world, one that is not limited to Mormonism and what ever limitations they face in their current lives.

So long as it was the parents choice I'd have no problem with that.

Would you have a problem if the motto was "kill the Mormon, save the man"? Would you be OK with the parent making the choice if they were going to be denied food for their families unless they sent their child away to be re-educated and made to be ashamed of Mormonism? Do you have any problem with the fact that Indians were made citizens of the United States and the states their reservations were located in but the state of Utah refused to use any funding to build schools on reservations? The Indians were without representation because they were denied the right to vote as long as they lived on reservations. This set up the situation where Indian parent's only choice for an education of their child was to send them away. The lawsuit Meyers vs. Board of Education finally got a school built. Utah was keeping federal dollars that were supposed to be for Indian education and using those monies in their own schools while Indian children either had to attend boarding schools or the LDS placement program just to get an education. So what exactly would you have no problem with considering the choices those Indian parents were forced to make? If those very same circumstances were placed on Mormon parents I find it hard to believe that you would not have a problem with that. I would fight for the Mormons in those circumstances.