Making Lamanites: Mormons, Native Americans, and the Indian Student Placement Program, 1947–2000 by Matthew Garrett (review)

MAKING LAMANITES OFFERS A HISTORIOGRAPHY of the Mormon Church's Indian School Placement Program (ISPP). In chapter 1 Garrett, an associate professor of history at Bakersfield College, introduces the ISPP. During the latter half of the twentieth century the church actively pursued the education of Native, in particular Navajo, children via a seasonal foster program. Fifty thousand Native American youth participated in this program (2). In the 1980s it was estimated that "one in twelve Navajos living on the reservation had participated" in the program (235). Drawing from ethnohistorical methods, Garrett examines the relationship between Mormon theological doctrine through the lens of colonization and oral histories from the participants: the "junction" between Mormons and Native Americans (1). Garrett argues that this measured approach reveals the complex and wide-ranging responses of Native students involved in the program. Garrett contributes to current literature in three ways. First, the monograph examines a later era of boarding school projects. Second, Garrett illuminates Mormon fixation with Native peoples. Third, he demonstrates a Mormon preoccupation: exposing Native children to Mormon doctrine via the ISPP with the expressed intent of producing a unique Lamanite identity.

Chapter 2 provides context as Garrett looks at the "special role" for Native Americans in Mormon Church doctrine. The Book of Mormon locates Native Americans as a lost tribe of Israel, referred to as Lamanites, who after years of conflict had forgotten their special and unique relationship as descendants with "the blood of Israel in their veins" (12). Garrett observes that in a tale that is one of both origin and prophecy, the ISPP "was the logical result of a theological position drawn from the church's foundational document" (11). Grounded in Mormon beliefs about Lamanites and a sense of Latter-day Saints responsibility, Garrett describes Mormon engagement with Native peoples as shifting from exoticization to paternalism.

In chapters 3 and 4 Garrett explores the historical context shaping the emergence of the ISPP, its particular emphasis on Navajo children, and its eventual institutionalization as a successful seasonal foster program. The author explains that as a result of efforts in World War II, the Navajo experienced greater exposure to the world. As a result, the community, which had previously avoided educational efforts, now desired educational opportunities and deeper intercultural understanding (37). However, the community had little to no access to schools. Mormons had frequent interactions with Navajo migrant working families and often developed attachments to the children. In 1947 a young Navajo girl, Helen Johns, went to live with a Mormon family she met during her family's migrant labor to attend school during the academic year. Conflicting narratives account for how this arrangement came to be, but Jones returned each year, and the "success" of the experiment grew over the next few years to include a dozen families. By the early 1970s the process had been institutionalized, and five thousand students were involved. It was declared that "the day of the Lamanite had finally arrived" and that the ISPP was its "crown jewel" (59).

Chapters 5 and 6 provide oral histories that describe the process and actual experience for youth involved in the program and Mormon host families. It is not until the sixth chapter that the reader fully understands the way that Mormon theological constructs of Lamanite (Native American) identity were racialized and demonized. The Book of Mormon uses descriptors such as "dark and loathsome … filthy … full of idleness and all manner of abominations" (104). The duty of the Mormon Church was to redeem the race so that the Lamanites could fulfill their prophetic, special role in the new world to come. Education through the ISPP was the way to achieve these goals, and many "anticipated biological changes to occur"; in other words, as the conversion process took place the children looked more white (105).

The concluding chapters, 7 and 8, account for the demise of the ISPP program at the end of the twentieth...