Review: Essays on American Indian & Mormon History

[_Lemmie]

Some excerpts from the Juvenile Instructor site, Regarding a review to be published:

Review: Essays on American Indian & Mormon History
By David G.June 24, 2020

This is an abbreviated version of a longer review that will appear in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Mormon History (thanks to the editors of the journal for permission to post this in advance of the journal’s version). If you missed it, see here for editor Brenden Rensink’s JI guestpost on the book.

P. Jane Hafen and Brenden W. Rensink, eds. Essays on American Indian & Mormon History. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2019. xxxiv + 372 pp. Notes, bibliography, contributors, index. Hardback: $45.00. eBook: $40.00.

P. Jane Hafen (Taos Pueblo) and Brenden W. Rensink have compiled eleven substantive essays that explore themes in the history of American Indians and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Hafen is professor emerita of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, while Rensink is Associate Director of the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies and Associate Professor of History at Brigham Young University.

Most of the essays in the collection were written in conjunction with a seminar hosted by the Redd Center in 2016. The editors’ introduction states that the collection seeks to identify “ways [that] Indigenous thought”—centered around issues such as Indigenous sovereignty, land and resources, colonialism, and decolonization—“interacts with Mormon histories, Mormon arts, and contemporary Mormon practices” (xii-xiii).

The introduction notes that previous scholarship has, with few exceptions, focused primarily on white Latter-day Saint views of Native peoples, whereas the featured essays instead reverse the equation by placing Natives at the center of the telling of Latter-day Saint history.

.... Essays on American Indian & Mormon History is a significant intervention in the growing literature that examines the interactions between Native peoples and Latter-day Saint religion. Although some essays more effectively break new ground than others, taken as a whole the collection provides an indispensable introduction to the main themes of that history....

https://juvenileinstructor.org/review-e ... n-history/

[bolding added]

Should be interesting. My family history includes a relative who served multiple “Lamanite” missions on the Navajo Reservation so I am looking forward to reading these essays.

[_Hagoth]

Yes, this should be interesting. Last year I had a conversation with a young Navajo man who told me he no longer knows anyone who self-identifies as Lamanite.

[_Fence Sitter]

Yes, this should be interesting. Last year I had a conversation with a young Navajo man who told me he no longer knows anyone who self-identifies as Lamanite.

That's okay. Neither does the church.

#Labenwantshisheadback

[_Hagoth]

Yes, this should be interesting. Last year I had a conversation with a young Navajo man who told me he no longer knows anyone who self-identifies as Lamanite.

That's okay. Neither does the church.

#Labenwantshisheadback

Whose gonna be the guy who lets God in on it:

-D&C 54:8 And thus you shall take your journey into the regions westward, unto the land of Missouri, unto the borders of the Lamanites.

-D&C 49:24 But before the great day of the Lord shall come, Jacob shall flourish in the wilderness, and the Lamanites shall blossom as the rose.

-D&C 28:14 And thou shalt assist to settle all these things, according to the covenants of the church, before thou shalt take thy journey among the Lamanites.

-D&C 19:27 Which is my word to the Gentile, that soon it may go to the Jew, of whom the Lamanites are a remnant, that they may believe the gospel, and look not for a Messiah to come who has already come.

-D&C 30:6 ...for I have given unto him power to build up my church among the Lamanites.

-D&C 28:9 ...and no man knoweth where the city of Zion shall be built, but it shall be given hereafter. Behold, I say unto you that it shall be on the borders by the Lamanites.

-D&C 32:2 ...he shall go with my servants, Oliver Cowdery and Peter Whitmer, Jun., into the wilderness among the Lamanites.

-D&C 3:18 And this testimony shall come to the knowledge of the Lamanites, and the Lemuelites, and the Ishmaelites, who dwindle in unbelief because of the iniquity of their fathers…

-D&C 28:8 And now, behold, I say unto you that you shall go unto the Lamanites and preach my gospel unto them;