Making Lamanites

"Explores why many Native youth in the Indian Student Placement Program adopted a new notion of identity. From 1947 to 2000, some 50,000 Native American children left the reservations to live with Mormon foster families. The access to educational opportunities and cross cultural experiences appealed to many Navajo and other Native American families in the post-war years. Some dropped out of the Indian Student Placement Program (ISPP) program, but for others the months spent in LDS families often proved more penetrating than expected. Making Lamanites traces this student experience within contested cultural and institutional landscapes to reveal how and why many of these Native youth adopted a new notion of Indianness. The ISPP emerged in the mid-twentieth century, championed by Apostle Spencer W. Kimball. The program aligned with the then national preferences to terminate tribal entities and assimilate indigenous people. But as the paradigm shifted to self-determination, critics labeled the program as crudely assimilationist. Some ISPP students like Navajo George P. Lee fiercely defended the LDS Church before Native peers and Congress, contending that it empowered Native people and instilled the true Indian identity, while Red Power activists organized protests in Salt Lake City, denouncing LDS colonization. As a new generation of church leaders quietly undercut the Indian programs, many of its former participants felt a sense of confusion and abandonment as Mormon distinction for Native people faded in the late twentieth century"--Provided by publisher.