The Lamanite Placement Program, Tribal Termination, and ICWA (part one)

“Ye should take unto you wives of the Lamanites…that their posterity may become white and delightsome.” 
- Joseph Smith, 1831

"(B)uy up the Lamanite children, educate them, and teach them the gospel so that… they should become a white and delightsome people. Buy them up to save their souls." 
- Brigham Young, 1851

“The day of the Lamanites is nigh… (T)hey are now becoming white and delightsome, as they were promised” 
- Spencer W. Kimball, 1960

"Joseph Smith Preaching to the Indians", William Armitage, 1890

Brigham Young leading Mormons to Salt Lake City, Utah

This is the part 1 of a series on the Lamanite Placement Program (1947-2000) thru which this church & it’s participants baptized, educated, and fostered 30,000-70,000 Indigenous kids (mostly Diné, aka Navajo).

This program is often addressed as one of good intentions that had some less than good results.

Thru this series I want to show that:

1) the intentions were violent as these supposed good intentions were based in anti-Indiegenous white-settler-supremacy, anti-collectivism, and historical igrorance.

2) this program is rooted in polygamy, rape, enslavement, and genocide with goal of stealing more Indigenous land

3) this program is embedded in a deeper U.S. settler project of biological genocide, enslavement, tribal termination, and the epidemic of settler adoption of Indigenous children which removed 25-35 percent of Indigenous children from their people by the ‘60s and led to the creation of ICWA

4) that Tribal Termination of the ‘50s has its roots in Mormonism

5) the current ICWA battle headed to Supreme Court is using the same tactics the Mormon church used to secure an exemption to ICWA so they could continue their assimilation practice in the form of the Lamanite Placement Program.

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

The Lamanite Placement Program (LPP) or Indian Student Placement Program was a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints-run Indigenous foster schooling program. From 1947-2000, about 30,000-70,000 Indigenous kids, mostly Diné, were baptized and fostered in white-Mormon homes to attend settler schools. Like Boarding Schools, students were discouraged from practicing their People’s traditions, languages, or visiting home during holidays. 

This Program was founded in the Mormon belief that Indigenous Peoples are related to settler-Mormons in the Tribes of Israel, but are no longer white because their ancestors rebelled against Christianity and so were cursed with dark skin. Settler-Mormons believe it is their divine duty to convert & assimilate Natives to restore their supposed original “white and delightsome”-ness. 

This program is often framed by sympathetic writers as an effort to uplift Indigenous Peoples. But as Margaret D. Jacobs writes, “Whether exploitative or benevolent, or both at the same time, the incorporation of … thousands of (Indigenous) children into Mormon homes served larger goals of the fledgling Mormon community—the displacement of (Indigenous) peoples from land that Mormon families sought to settle upon and develop.” 

Many settlers also try to diminish the severity of assimilation by saying “that isn’t genocide, genocide is about killing.” But separating cultural genocide from biological genocide “confuses definition with degree… In practice, (assimilation) is certainly going to have a direct impact on that People’s capacity to stay alive.” (Patrick Wolfe) Thus, assimilation is about killing as it operates to “Kill the Indian, save the man.” Or in this case: “Kill the Indian, save the Lamanite.”