Unsettling Mormonism
an archive of unsettling histories, mythistories, and mystories
from U.S. & Mormon settler colonialism, white supremacy, and imperialism
from U.S. & Mormon settler colonialism, white supremacy, and imperialism
White / U.S. / settler / Christian nuclear family values creates a continuous line of blood descendants. Someone to hand your wealth, seeded in stolen land by stolen labor, down to.
Wolfe writes that "settler colonialism destroys to replace." Reproductive white settler families fulfill both the destroy (through settler-violences) and replace (through sexual reproduction) functions of settler-colonialism. “Women's reproductive labors-both in a literal and a social sense-were central to these processes.” - Margaret D. Jacobs While white women were asked to make more settlers, settlers were sterilizing Indigenous women without informed consent through the 1920s and 30s. "(By the time) the Indigenous population had started to rebound in the 1960s, public discourse about poor Indian women having too many kids contributed to a renewed effort to sterilize Indian women. The fed gov expanded federal funding to the IHS for sterilizations in the 70s. In some Indigenous communities, more than 50% of women of childbearing age reported having been sterilized without proper informed consent or under threat of having their children removed.” - Margaret D. Jacobs This is ongoing for BIPOC, poor, and disabled People with fallopian tubes. Euro patriarchal gender roles and their connections to property also disrupt many Indigenous lifeways--disconnecting a People from their communal land, dividing it up into property, and altering the organizational structures of Indigenous communities. “This process...replaces existing kinship structures with a linear (and hierarchical) view of relationships, family, and accountabilities to each other. To decimate kinship structures that (exist outside of Euro-cis-het norms) requires...a mother, who is a cis-woman; a father, who is a cis-man; and a child who is coded male or female to ensure a continuation of the gender roles assigned and the commodified reproduction of their future descendants” - Sandy O’Sullivan
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AuthorI 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. They also sacrificed their humanities as they committed genocide against Kuttuhsippeh (Goshute), Timpanogos Shoshone, Shoshone-Bannock, Eastern Shoshone, Ute, Nuwu (Southern Paiute), and Diné (Navajo). Because my ancestors made my home through Indigenous genocide in their home/lands––I take it as my personal responsibility to unsettle what my ancestors settled, while helping my fellow settlers do the same through reading, writing, art, and community building. Archives
June 2023
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