Lamanite Placement Program, Red Power, and an ICWA exemption (part three)

​In the ‘70s, Red Power movements like the American Indian Movement (AIM) & the Association on American Indian Affairs (AAIA) were growing. These organizers & activists focused on Tribal “self-determination.”

With the rise of these movements, Placement Program enrollment began to fall. In ‘73 & ‘74 the AIM protested at Temple Square during General Conference. This church also faced scrutiny from AAIA as they studied the epidemic of Indigenous Child Removal in preparation for ICWA. 

Thru connections w/ the Program, white-Mormon families were also adopting Indigenous children. By ‘75, “the majority of adoptions of Navajo children (were) done by the LDS Social Service Program,” One white-Mormon Placement mother who’d also adopted 5 Indigenous children was fond of saying: “Taking Indians is like eating popcorn. I keep wanting more and more.”

It was bc of this taking “more and more” Indigenous children that the Association on American Indian Affairs (AAIA) studied this form of genocide and found that 25%-35% of Indigenous kids lived away from their People.

This study helped create ICWA, which was meant to "protect the best interests of Indian children and to promote the stability and security of Indian tribes and families.” I’d’ve imagined that this church, with its Family Proclamation, would be in support of a law meant to “protect families.” They certainly worked to protect their own.

In the early ‘20s, when Mormon leaders learned that a non-Mormon child placement agency was working in Utah, they wrote, “The Brethren feel that the duty of child placing in the Church should be done by the Relief Society.”

The Relief Society, also responsible for the Placement Program, seem to be blissfully unaware of the hypocrisy of keeping kids born to Mormons w/in Mormonism while separating Indigenous children from their Peoples.

In 1977, Diné man, Placement graduate, & the first Lamanite member of this church’s hierarchy, George P. Lee, spoke in defense of the Program at an ICWA hearing in Congress. Lee argued for a special LDS exemption to the Act by presenting letters of support from Tribal leaders and Placement parents and students. Lee was supported in Congress by Utah Senator Hatch and Utah Representative McKay.

Orrin Hatch, Senator from Utah, (1977--2019). Hatch served for 42, one of the longest, and was a lifelong Mormon.

George P. Lee, First Quorum of the Seventy, 1975–1989. First Indigenous person to serve in upper-levels of the Mormon hierarchy.

K. Gunn McKay, Representative from Utah, 1971–1981. McKay was a cousin of the Mormon Prophet David O. McKay and lifelong Mormon.

Mormons co-opted the collective concept of Tribal “self-determination” turning it into individualism w/ Lee saying, “One of the rights that Indian families value most is self-determination… We encourage you to preserve our right to self-determination thru amdending (the Indian Child Welfare Act).”

In a 1978 hearing on the Act, Faye LaPointe of the Puyallup Tribe said, “the Puyallup Tribe wholeheartedly opposed the LDS program and encourages this committee to discourage the efforts of the Mormon Church in their practices of genocide on our people.” 

In 1978, the Indian Child Welfare Act, meant to stop the genocidal adoption of Indigenous children by white settler families, passed–& included the Placement Program exception.

The Senator who sponsored ICWA shared his frustrations w/ Mormon interference saying, "We exempted it on purpose and out of necessity. There would have been one hell of a political fight if we hadn't.”

To read the full length essay with sources see “Mormonism and Indigenous Assimilation” ​