Elise Boxer - Böcker

According to the Book of Mormon, dissent wracked the Hebrew prophet Lehi's family after they traveled to the Americas around BC. A son, Laman, led rebellious followers who became 'Lamanites,' cursed by God with a 'skin of blackness.' In the nineteenth century, Joseph Smith, the first prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and his followers believed Indigenous peoples to be Lamanite descendants, living in a degraded state because they no longer followed God's commandments. In Mormon Settler Colonialism, Elise Boxer investigates the racializing ideologies perpetuated about Indigenous peoples as a result of their categorization by Mormon doctrine as Lamanites. Boxer uses the theoretical framework of settler colonialism - in which settlers dispossess Indigenous peoples of their lands and identity - to explore how the Mormon church has used religious doctrine to define and construct Indigeneity. She examines the development of these ideas beginning with the early nineteenth-century establishment of the LDS Church and the publication of religious texts like the Book of Mormon, which introduced the Lamanite. Boxer explores Mormon settler colonialism beginning in the mid- 80s and investigates the Indian Student Placement Program, a foster care program that placed Indigenous children in Mormon homes during the second half of the twentieth century. Boxer argues that Mormon settler colonialism persists today, evident in the recent publication of an LDS Church manual using racialized language and contestations over the proposal to remove a mural depicting Mormon settler life in a sacred, religious structure. Boxer demonstrates how Indigenous peoples have been objects of erasure by Mormon doctrine and practices as Mormon settlers, wielding their whiteness, signaled their innocence, justified their actions, and secured their belonging through the production of Lamanite discourse. Although the idea of the Lamanite is foundational to Mormon discourse, the formation and dissemination of this constructed identity has not been examined in broader terms of colonialism and the cultural genocide of Indigenous peoples. This provocative book deepens the intersection of Mormonism, race (Indigeneity), and colonialism in a critical and necessary direction.

In this volume, contributors demonstrate the real-world application of Indigenous theory to the work they do in their own communities and how this work is driven by urgency, responsibility, and justice--work that is from the skin.In From the Skin, contributors describe how they apply the theories and concepts of Indigenous studies to their communities, programs, and organizations. These individuals reflect on and describe the ways the discipline has informed and influenced their community programs and actions. They show the ways these efforts advance disciplinary theories, methodologies, and praxes. Their chapters cover topics that include librarianship, health programs, community organizing, knowledge recovery, youth programming, and gendered violence. Through their examples, the contributors show how they negotiate their peoples’ knowledge systems with knowledge produced in Indigenous studies programs, demonstrating how they understand the relationship between their people, their nations, and academia.Editors J. Jeffery Clark and Elise Boxer propose and develop the term practitioner-theorist to describe how the contributors theorize and practice knowledge within and between their nations and academia. Because they live and exist in their community, these practitioner-theorists always consider how their thinking and actions benefit their people and nations. The practitioner-theorists of this volume envision and labor toward decolonial futures where Indigenous peoples and nations exist on their own terms.ContributorsElise BoxerRandi Lynn Boucher-GiagoShawn BrigmanJ. Jeffery ClarkNick EstesEric HardyShalene JosephJennifer MarleyBrittani R. OronaAlexander Soto