Unsettling Mormonism
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  • Home
  • Posts
    • Scroll
  • Essays
    • Mormonism and Indigenous Assimilation
    • Eugenic Family Values in Mormonism
    • Mormon Mythistries
  • About

Unsettling Mormonism

How do I hold a love that grew in a massacre site?
I am nicholas b jacobsen, an artist, researcher, historian, educator, and organizer. I am a trans-non binary Euro-settler raised in the Nuwu lands of so-called Utah. My family has been Mormon and Utahn for as long as either of those concepts have existed. My ancestors sacrificed everything--their identities, homelands, jobs, health, & safety to become Mormon, Utahn, U.S. American, & white--to settler their Zion. I take it as my personal responsibility to unsettle what my ancestors settled and to invite fellow settlers do the same through writing, art, and community building.

Through this page I work to highlight myths of innocence associated with Mormonism and the formation of the western United States, to bring attention to its notions of cultural and racial supremacy, and the resulting violence those myths attempt to conceal.

This project grew from the love I carry for the land I was raised by & with which I redeveloped my spirituality after leaving Mormonism. Through studying decolonization, settler colonialism, & Indigenous resistance from mostly Indigenous, Black, & Brown writers, professors, & friends I began to viscerally understand that the only reason I have access to this land, this love, my spirituality is because my ancestors committed genocide against the Peoples Indigenous to these lands. My body & my ancestors’ grew from stolen land, from the trauma of genocide, & the trauma of justifying, ignoring & gaslighting that truth. It is who my People are.

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How do I hold a love that grew in a massacre site?


​​Publications & Podcasts


 Publications

​“Lithic Record,” co-authored with Nina Elder
Ventriloquism, Performance, and Contemporary Art
ed. by Jennie Hirsh and Isabelle Wallace
​London and New York: Routledge. 

Expected publication date: Fall 2022

The Roots of the LDS Church's Opposition to Same Sex Marriage
CounterPunch.org
June 2022

Mormon Mythistries: Richard Hansen in El Mirador
(removed)

CounterPunch.org 
March 2022

12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now
Southwest Contemporary Magazine
2021

Unsettling Mormonism
Instagram
November 2020 - Current


Land of my breath, people of my flesh
Self-published
March 2020
Podcasts
​

The Red Nation Podcast
“Unsettling Mormonism w/ nic & Kobi”
The Red Nation

December 2021

Chatter Marks 
“Erratic Conversations: Pt.3, Futurism and Hope.”
Anchorage Musuem
May 2021

A Guide to Art, Activism, & Culture
“Family, Mormonism, and Whiteness”
The Aerogramme Center for Arts and Culture
July 2020. ​