Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship
  •  
  •  
 

Mormon Studies Review

Christen Mucher

Keywords

Mormons, indigenous, church history, identity, decolonial

Abstract

The past few years in Mormon studies have seen an increase in scholarly turns to critical race, gender analytics, and, even more recently, decolonial approaches.1 Essays on American Indian and Mormon History, edited by P. Jane Hafen (Taos Pueblo) and Brenden W. Rensink, definitively adds Indigeneity to that list of critical terms. The result of a 2015 seminar at the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, Brigham Young University,the collection aims to bring together scholarship on Mormon-Indigenous relations with that on Indigenous Mormons to examine the influence of Mormonism on Indigenous peoples and identities, as well as to highlight the “unseen implications or unintended consequences of Mormon views of American Indians” (251). The project seeks to explore how Mormon and Indigenous American experiences “intersect, overlap, sometimes conflict, engage, and often fail to engage each other” (xii). Conscious of the potentially controversial nature of such a work, the editors make clear their commitment to proceed with “humility, sincerity, and courage” (248). Anticipating discomfort, Rensink invites engagement despite the pain the volume’s ideas might provoke, suggesting that readers should “sit with them, struggle with them, and then take steps to inquire further” (246). The resulting collection of essays is a diverse mix of methodological and cultural positions, with the preponderance of contributors being professional historians. Many are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, some are Indigenous (indicated in parentheses), and a few are both tribal and LDS Church members.

Download

Share

COinS