It would be a good thing for Native Americans and all of their counsels and tribes to sue the LDS Corporation for slander.

Slander is –noun
1.
defamation; calumny: rumors full of slander.
2.
a malicious, false, and defamatory statement or report: a slander against his good name.

On a daily basis a large American corporation is sending out 50,000 salesmen to slander Native Americans teaching they are cursed and attempt to erase their actual origins with a lie.

This belief Native Americans are cursed definitely has caused harm and prejudice towards them.

Maybe it is time they force the LDS church into stopping such provable lies that have real ramifications against them and their heritage.

So who ya gonna sue first?

TSCC can discriminate against.

Unreal, and they are god's chosen profits who label as 'less than' to prop themselves up.

Blacks, gays, women, Christians, and intellectuals have all been singled out as needing to be "fixed" by the lard's anointed.

How UN-Christ like for the brethren to ridicule.

Phony self-righteous con men that they clearly are to most folks.

I place Monson, Oaks, and Packer right at the top of my list of shithead assholes who are highly skilled at conning people.

Good luck suing them -- THEY can't even agree with themselves on who the Laminites were/are. ;)

As a Native American, I don't see the point in this. We've been pushed down and attacked from all sides. At this point, we're used to it. What's one more teeny, tiny, mostly insignificant religious group's mild defamation of our ancestors?

Plus, this is the United States of America and people are entitled to their religious doctrines and their freedom of speech, however disgusting and ridiculous the beliefs and speech might be. Further, who would we sue? LDS Inc.? I can just hear Mon$on up on the stand, in the tradition of Hinckley: "I don't know that we teach that."

No amount of compensation could make up for the way Europeans have treated Native Americans, and any attempt to try would only belittle our suffering. Ultimately, one has to seek inner peace on these things and not recourse in the legal system. I say this even as a future attorney. It's not worth it.

+1

I think the tribes have more pressing matters like getting basic needs (like running water) to the reservations and bettering life for the people.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/08/2011 12:32PM by itzpapalotl.

it would be to draw attention to the racist teachings of the LDS Church. The only way Mormonism changes is when they are forced to. That is how blacks got the priesthood and how polygamy was stopped.

Some media pressure would do wonders. Mormons love being persecuted and when they are shown to be the actually bullies they panic and start making policy changes.

The teachings on the blacks is one example. Now they LDS Inc. claims it was never official doctrine the blacks were less valiant in the spirit world and that is why the recieved a curse. That teaching is now gone. Would it not be nice to have the teaching that Native Americans are all cursed gone?

I guess being called "LOATHSOME" is a punch to the stomach.

I personnally heard a Native American (Navajo) tell me at a National Park that the Great Spirit told the Anasazi to split into two groups (Hopi and Navajo), that's why we can't find the Anasazi. This was as a tour guide in Mesa Verde.

I Don't much care for the Mormons' retarded view of Native American ancestry, but some Native Americans are also not quite "scientifically based" on their own origins - they're even allowed to tout their beliefs as fact to tourists at a National Park, unlike the mormons.

Don't know how much good a lawsuit would do here.

I would have appreciated it. Simply hearing an indigenous origin story would have been interesting to me. Did the speaker claim it was truth and reality? I'm curious because I know some Native American people who fully accept evolution, but they argue that since the Bible is a myth, why should it's stories be the only ones?

As far as it being a National Park, it seems it would be informative but not a religious attempt to proselyte.

But look what the Bible believers attempt to do with government -

http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/evolution-revolution/Content?oid=1079403

""It's hard for me to understand how evolution can get put into school science programs and get stuffed down the throats of those who don't want to hear it and who don't believe it anyway," Johnson says."

That sounds like his version of things or just a story he told to entertain his group. The Dine' for the most part dont get along with the Hopi. The Hopi predate the Dine' and are of the same stock as the Rio Grande Puebloans. The Dine and Apache share the same Athabascan roots. The puebloans are the most likely to have come from the Anasazi though no one really knows. The Dine' and Apaches were nomadic and moved into the region well after the Anasazi were gone.

They said they may have left because of soil depletion. Overfarming may have contributed to their leaving.

Yeah, thats one of the more credable theories. It's also what led researchers to hypothesize that the puebloans claims to an ansetrial connection may be legitamite.

I would agree with Ella Bee on the mild defamation point to an extent. But there are problems. For example, the attempt to create the Central Band of Cherokee created huge problems for the Cherokee Nation.

The COJCOLDS was not the cause, but LDS members were involved, inspired by mormon teachings. Perhaps a lawsuit against the DNA Testing company that argued there was Jewish DNA in the individuals claiming to be Cherokee. Maybe a lawsuit against Glenn Beck for promoting known fraudulent artifacts (Bat Creek and Newark stones) in his attempt to present a revised history in the public mind.

I don't know, I am not an attorney.

I wished they would! Not only for the racism (cursed with darkness, etc.) but having been blamed by Young and Co. for being the sole perpetrators in the MMM).

They most certainly deserve an apology for that. The Methodists finally apologized for Chivington, the Methodist preacher turned Military leader for he Sand Creek slaughter, having used this mass-murder as "God's will". A bit late, but at least it was acknowledged for what it was.

I just went to the Pine Ridge Rez's website and shuddered how we can allow this as Americans and why TSCC doesn't help them. After all, they believe in reaching out to the "Lamanites". I send what I can, but it's not even a drop in the bucket.

But than again, every person of color needs to sue everyone who ever makes those sick remarks about the so-called curse of Cain. It's not just a mormon thing.

I'm just getting very depressed about all of this considering where I'm coming from. Sorry about the rant!

Imagine if there was a "christian" church that still publicly proclaimed their holy doctrine that Jews were dark and loathsome, cursed people. Do you think some Jews would sue to stop this?

I don't know if they can sue just for what a church teaches.

http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/Christian_Identity.asp?xpicked=4&item=Christian_ID

In Canada, Jews would prosecute such slander in the courts based on the hate speech laws. And they'd likely win.

hello wrote:
Imagine if there was a "christian" church that still publicly proclaimed their holy doctrine that Jews were dark and loathsome, cursed people. Do you think some Jews would sue to stop this?
>>>>>>

I wonder what the Arabs would do, as they're of the semitic race as well.

About Jews being that way, well, just check any white supramecist website. They're usually run by so-called Christians.
(which reminded me of a 2nd councilor who told me that the Holocaust was the fault of the Jews. He didn't know my mom was a Holocaust survivor).

Is there any precedent for religious belief vs slander? My guess is that they aren't the same thing.

Agreed, they are different. But in some jurisdictions, while belief is protected, speech deemed hateful is not.

In Canada, some folks have been arrested for hate speech violations for proselyting on the streets, quoting from the Bible and their tracts about the sinfulness of gays.

And Canadian Jews have already sued a number of people for similar violations, directed at their community. Some slanders are religion-based, some are otherwise I suppose.

I make no judgment, I didn't write the laws of Canada. But I think the trend in the US seems to be toward the same type of anti-hate speech laws.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/10/2011 05:00AM by hello.

I just always feel the need to apologize to my native Canadian ancestors for calling them Lamanites. Makes me cringe now.

You know,

I have only been posting here for a little while, and I do have to thank this board for inspiring me to read up on the mormon religion and I have to say...
I am with Elle Bee. I am part native myself. Granted, it is actual native Hawaiian, but that is native none the less. My mom had a scholarship and went to BYU Hawaii for a few years, but she never was nor ever will be mormon. My grandfather on her side was Buddhist, and that is more or less the side I lean on. With that being said, I relate to all native people and the persecution they received. We can sue the likes of the mormon church all we like, but it will solve nothing; nothing will ever undue the pain and suffering that has been done. As someone who does take pride in thinking they are native, (or atleast part inspite of my pale skin) nothing will change the past; our parents and grandparents endured much suffering. If you wish to honor your family, educate yourself and live free; do not allow yourself to be taken advantage of. Be free and help your own. This probably sounds really immature, but these are the words of my mother, someone born before Hawaii was a state and I believe them with my heart.
I would rather choose to be the more honorable person and live an honorable life than stoop to the level of a gutter snipe and play dirty.

I was looking out the window from the second story of the hospital on the Navajo Nation, where I had been working for years, and saw two missionaries walking past the clinic. I knew that one of the women I was working with had been "adopted" (kidnapped) by a Mormon family in the 70's. The church encouraged families to do this in order to proselytize and lighten the skin of the children, who would not be spending time outside on the ranches. The church demonstrated that the lighter skin of indoor Navajo kids was testimony that they could be saved from their fate.

Anyway, she looked up and saw them too. The rage and sadness in her was palpable. She ran away from that Mormon family, but had lost a couple of years away from her own family and she'll never forgive them.

Oddly, my best friend's Hopi aunt is LDS but only a couple of her kids are.

By "kidnapped" by Mormons, what happened during those years was that families were convinced that if they gave up their kids, they would have access to better education and other benefits. They targeted very poor Navajo families, usually ones where grandparents were raising their grandkids and having trouble keeping food on the table.

If Native Americans are going to put their lawyers in gear, they may as well sue some present-day Christians as well.

http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2011/02/american-family-association-native.html

In this blog post, dated February 8, 2011, we see that some Christians are exhibiting the most vile forms of racism and bigotry. This is not history, folks. This is today's news.

Excerpts below:
"According to the American Family Association, Native Americans are 'morally disqualified from sovereign control of American soil' because they rejected early efforts to impose Christianity upon them."

Bryan Fischer explains:
"The native American tribes ultimately resisted the appeal of Christian Europeans to leave behind their superstition and occult practices for the light of Christianity and civilization.

"...one tribe after another rejected the offer of spiritual light and advanced civilization. God warned the ancient nation of Israel not to lapse into the abominable practices of the native peoples 'lest the land vomit you out...as it vomited out the nation that was before you' (Lev. 18:28). Time eventually ran out for the Canaanites, because they filled up the full measure of their iniquity. Time ran out for the native American tribes for the same reason...."