White supremacy in genealogy: anti-racist genealogy: part 4

This part 4 of a 7-part series on philosemetism / antisemitism in Mormonism & white supremacy in genealogy.

When I shared some of this info in stories someone reached out to ask how to do anti-racist ancestry work & this person noted "how other cultures honor & respect their family & ancestors as a spiritual practice that connects them to the earth & each other.”

I love this question. It was a big part of the project that started Unsettling Mormonism. 

I’ve been told by a professional genealogist that when Euro-settler-Mormons do their genealogy they are seeking connections to famous Mormons, kings, & colonists. I don’t imagine this is what anyone doing ancestry work “as a spiritual practice that connects them to the earth & each other” is looking for. I think a lot of what would make ancestry work anti-racist (or not) is WHY you’re doing it.

In my WHY, is a seeking to understand why my ancestors committed the horrors they did while settling their Zion, building a life for their family. Not so i can justify it. But so that I can understand and reckon with it—be accountable to it. 

Lastly I want to acknowledge the gratitude I hold in being able to access all these photos, stories, and histories. Even as they may have been gathered in a spirit of white supremacy, they are a gift. 
Many Peoples don’t have this access and often as a direct result of white supremacy such as descendants of enslaved Africans who were intentionally cut off from their past. Or Indigenous Peoples whose histories were destroyed through genocide and assimilation. 

My Ancestral History work was about Place, whose main character is Land. I want to know about where I am FROM —- spiritually, ideologically, & materially. I knew my flesh & language did not evolve in the lands I call home & knew that a deep relationship to land is essential to survival. My connection to land is tied to a connection to my ancestors, to settler-colonialism–that which I exist because of. 

I wasn’t as interested in my genetics as I was my culture—my baseline reality. I wanted to learn about this baseline reality to eradicate white-settler-supremacy from my intuition. This was especially important to me because I was an artist interested in mending the nature/culture false binary through intuitive interactions with mostly rocks, stones, and concrete. 

And my settler relationship to the lands I’ve lived on and call home is a fraught thing to be intuitive about. Especially when my intuitions are founded in the white-settler supremacist baseline realities I’ve inherited. 

I access my ancestral records, photos, journals, and bios through FamilySearch.org. Which is owned & operated by this church & its practitioners. These records are kept inside of a highly secure vault built into a granite mountain. This vault is carved into the same canyon from which the Salt Lake temple is made. This is Timpanogos, Shoshone Bannock, and Goshute land.

Because FamilySearch is run by Mormons and the histories I already know were taught to me by Mormons, I compliment my ancestral work by researching settler histories of Mormonism, Utah, and the U.S.––the institutions which most shape my baseline reality. I intentionally seek out histories of Peoples Indigenous to the lands my ancestors settled and lived on. I how and why they went there. What drove my ancestors to move from their homes in Denmark to the high deserts of Nuwu, Diné, Ute, Goshute, Shoshone Bannock, and Timpanogos Peoples? And what did they do once they were there?
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I intentionally seek out these histories from the perspectives of Nuwu, Diné, Ute, Goshute, Shoshone Bannock, and Timpanogos persons and organizations. 

I also study Mormon history in order to learn what my ancestors were being taught and what they believed. I wanted to know how they justified the genocides they enacted as they settled their Zion. I wanted to know what kinds of ideologies were passed down in families, whether or not they were still current doctrine. 

​White-supremacy and settler-colonialism doesn’t fade with time. They are passed down from generation to generation, like family heirlooms. These ideologies end as we collectively, actively work to recognize them, reckon with them, and end these cycles of abuse, supremacy, and violence.

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White supremacy in genealogy

Part 1 is about how Mormonism foundationally used genealogy to reify its white-supremacist doctrines which teach that Euro-Mormons—as the keepers of the keys of THE “One True Church,” and descendants of Ephraim’s tribe of Israel—are God’s Chosen Race and People.

Part 2 is about how this shows up in Mormon temple work, eternal families, & genealogy.

Part 3 is on the classist, femicidal violences of Mormon doctrine on Eternal Families, Polygyny, and Godhood.

Part 4 shares my personal experience with using genealogy in an anti-racist way.

Part 5 is on the ways antisemitism and anti-Indigeneity overlap in Mormonism 

Part 6  builds on part 5 through a critical analysis of the art and history in the Manti temple and it's grounds.

Part 7 addresses the Baptisms for the Dead that Mormons did for Jews killed in the Holocaust  along with Hitler and other Nazis.

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