Every Pioneer Parade is a Military Parade

Pioneer day pt 3

"One of the characteristics of trauma is the deep desire to repress it. Until you tell the story, til you face the truth of the horrors that have happened—that harm will haunt you, haunt your dreams as an individual, haunt your collective unconscious as a society.” - Reverend Serene Jones

⚠️addresses colonial violence⚠️

174 July 24ths ago (as of 2021, which was 77years before Mormon President Nelson’s born), Mormon Prophet Brigham Young overlooking the lush lake valley filled with waist-high grasses said, “This is the place.” (He didn’t but this is relatively harmless founding myth).

Soon after, Timpanogos Chief Wakara told Young that he and his People were not welcome to settle in Timpanogos home/land. Brigham said they were only passing through to California, needed to overwinter, and would continue in the spring. 

Three years later,  Brigham Young signed the Timpanogos Extermination Order, (12years after the Mormon Extermination Order) which killed 90% of the Timpanogos population.

"I say go [and] kill them…" said Brigham Young, "let the women and children live if they behave themselves… We have no peace until the men [are] killed off—never treat the Indian as your equal."

My People continued to pour into Indigenous lands at about 3,000 persons per month.  About 20,000 Indigenous people were living in so-called Utah when Mormons arrived. 20 years later ~60,000 Mormons had moved in.

Settlers disrupted the land’s balance
(balanced because of Indigenous care). 

By diverting streams, culling animals, cutting trees, and their cattle overgrazing on grasses, (sending native animals away), my people desertified this land  and committed genocide against its  Indigenous Peoples.

The church says Complex Circumstances led to Utahs Black Hawk War. 

“It was the summer of 1847 our lives would be changed, a new people would come, not like the 'big hats' of old. These people would build fences, claim lands and disrupt our culture and way of life. Bringing confusion as they spoke of their God and peace while sharing sacks of flour laced with broken glass. Brigham Young said 'You can get rid of more Indians with a sack of flour than a keg of powder.' Destroying us with what appeared to be acts of kindness. As our Timpanogos tribal leaders Kanosh, Tabby, Washakie, Little Wolf, Wanship, Little Chief, Kone, Blue Shirt, Big Elk, Opecarry, Old Battestie, Tintic, Sowiet, Angatewats, Walkara, Graspero and others extend their hospitality to Brigham Young and his followers, they were unaware of the bloodshed that would follow, some 150 bloody confrontations between 1847-70. (See Utah Black Hawk War; Timpanogos of the Wasatch)

“By the year 1909 most of our leaders were killed many of them in the Black Hawk War, our population decreased from approximately 70,000 to about 1,300. Today our population is close to 900. The newcomers called us the "Lamanites" the chosen people, we were chosen to walk knee deep in the blood of our ancestors, to suffer from whitemans' disease, to accept their ways and beliefs or die, fighting to preserve our way of life. What choice did we have? Our ancestors blood covers the Wasatch, and then we were forgotten. We were shoved aside in the name of progress. Yet, with all this we remain.

“The time has come for the truth to be spoken. We are still here. We will not be brushed aside. We the Timpanogos people are the indigenous people of Utah, we are Shoshone. The blood of our ancestors cries out to us. They must be remembered for who they really were.”

A Timpanogos member said, "What choice were we given? To walk knee deep in the blood of our people? Or give up our sacred land and culture and accept white man's ways? It was a matter of what's right. Our honor. Survival. Why is that so complicated?"

During this “war” the Church spent  about 113 Mormon lives and over a million dollars (which was reimbursed by the U.S. and the equivalent of about $31 million today) taking ~932 Indigenous lives  (in addition all the lives taken through  starvation, enslavement, and drought).

This continued on throughout so-called Deseret

(breathe)

"May we go forward in repentance, which does not require individual culpability and shows how a community owns and understands the reverberations of its actions and its realities.

"May we seek repentance, which means to walk in a different direction. It’s so much more than, 'I’m sorry.'"
​
- adapted from Reverend Serene Jones​​