I am going on 10 years an ExMo and am currently dating a NeverMo anthropologist. He does a lot of work with Native American Repatriation. Simply put: returning historic relics and/or artifacts that we arrogant Fair and Delightsome people stole, back to Native American tribes.

Dating NeverMo's can (or almost always is) an amalgam of an odd, awkward, embarrassing apologetic experience as I recall the years spent being devout TBM. I recently remembered the Adopt an Indian program that the church once participated in. Does anyone remember what happened to that, how it slowly disappeared almost as ominous as the Book of Abraham emphasis?

I know the Indian Placement program was still going around 1980, but that Kimball had finally given up on the Lamanites literally turning white. Then he was a figurehead for a few years, with Hinckley as the obvious head of the church. I think Benson may have ended the program after he ascended to power in 1985. I know the Navajo GA George Lee accused Benson of being racist when he resigned.

Sorry, Lee was excommunicated in 1989. I think his accusations of racism may have been private, and the church simply waited until they had some dirt on him.

ICWA

Congressman Morris Udall of AZ led the charge to shut-down the program with the Indian Child Welfare Act. Udall was LDS. The legislation was opposed by the LDS Church.

I remember some families having the Indian kids. They all snuck out in the middle of the night and went home. What a joke,,

The program had been going on in the 60s and 70s with horrible results. The kids I knew - and I knew a lot - all ran away at one point or another. They hated being in these homes. What the hell was the program suppose to do? "Lets take the children out of their homes, away from their families, and show them how to be 'white' because, you know, that's better than not being white." What a crock of sh*t.

One boy - and I remember his name to this day - decided to walk out into some empty fields early in the morning. Just as the sun peeked out, he shot himself. He was facing to the east.

Heartbreaking. Someone should make a film (like the atrocities of the indigenous Aborigines genocide).

My aunt and uncle "took" two kids in the program.
I considered them my cousins, and treated them as such.
My aunt and uncle considered them servants, and treated them as such.
They came back year after year, despite their treatment, because church leaders convinced them this was the best thing they could do. When they graduated from high school, both ditched my aunt and uncle, and never looked back. Both left the church as well.

I saw my "cousin" Roger two years ago. There was a family reunion of sorts for my grandmother's 101st birthday. He came, and it was great to see him. My aunt and uncle didn't come. Roger and I were the only ex-mos in the bunch :(

John Dehlin did a Mormon Stories podcast on the Indian Placement Program last year. I remember it being pretty interesting.

http://mormonstories.org/indian-placement-program/

I remember the Indian Placement Program being highly promoted in the 60's. Of course, the Church leaders kept on saying how inspired it was, and how it was the member's obligation to take in these Lamanites so they could "blossom as a rose."

The program was a dismal failure and most educated observers viewed it as "cultural genocide" of the native Americans.

DNA

Exmos should make a like program of "adopt a local missionary"

Bring them home, teach them how to play beer pong and make Jell-O shots. Get them laid, and get them home.

It was only ended in 2000, but not formally. Like so much about TSCC, they would rather just pretend it never happened.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Placement_Program
"In 2000 the last student graduated from the program, though the program never was officially discontinued."

I guess once I left Brigham City, I didn't see much of it. Many families in the ward I lived in had placement students and, like someone above said, they were treated like servants. I noted a lot of the girls were brought into families with a lot of small children. One I knew who was my age in school was basically the childcare worker for the family.

The program always bothered me because, myself, I could never have lived apart from my family for the school year.

what? an inspired lamanite placement program ? under the direction of the lord's own prophet?

we don't know much about it, don't worry about those little flecks of history, it's behind us now

Yes, it was so inspiring to watch the Indian kids placed in the
ward gradually turn white.

I grew up with First Nation kids from Alberta that were 'placed' in my home. I thought of them as my brother and sister. We still keep in touch today. I heard of problems between families and 'placed' kids but my brother and sister seemed to really enjoy living with us. At the time, government programs were practically nonexistent. They would go back to live with their families during the summers, but came back yeare after year to live with us and attend school. Nobody forced them to participate in the program. They did go to church with us, this was back when church activities were fun. Otherwise, there was no expectation that they would actually believe it. My 'brother' and 'sister' went on to University, started careers, married, and raised families. The placement program actually worked for them by giving them opportunities for education, and skills to help assist their people.

A lot of large Mormon families were arm twisted into taking in a Lamanite student, with predictable results.

It may have worked well for a few well to do families but mostly it seemed to be a disaster.

They tried to foist one on us too and the bishop kept bugging us about it.
NO WAY !!!
We had our own three kids (all planned) and I wasn't about to raise someone else's kids for them.
Which is exactly what I told the idiot bishop.

My parents took in one in the late 1960's. She stayed for one school year.

I remember when our family went to meet her before the school year starting. There were busloads of Indian children being dropped off at a stake center. Where all the foster families were there to meet and greet them. There were dozens of them waiting to be placed with their foster families.

That's how I got my first "sister." My other baby sister died at five days old, so it was nice to have another girl in the family because I was outnumbered 3 to 1 by brothers.

Corky was her name, short for Cordelia. Her family was very poor on a reservation. Most of the children in the placement program came from underprivileged families. Corky's family was very close nonetheless. Her grandma made us kids Indian treasures as presents. Mine was a handbeaded Indian necklace I cherished.

Corky's father was an alcoholic, who would trap neighborhood puppies running around the reservation and make soup out of their tails, when he was drunk. I couldn't believe that when she shared it, but it was a delicacy according to her.

Still, she didn't like the ways of the white man's world, and didn't return after the one school year. There was only one of the placed Indian children in our ward that did return year after year. Only one. The rest just stopped coming back.

"I remember when our family went to meet her before the school year starting. There were busloads of Indian children being dropped off at a stake center. Where all the foster families were there to meet and greet them. There were dozens of them waiting to be placed with their foster families."

Omg, that sounds like Britain in 1939 when children were torn from their families and evacuated from the cities to the country due to the war.
They would arrive at their destination and wait to be chosen by local families.
Like the Native American Placement Programme some were happy and formed life long friendships and relationships with their host families, but a lot weren't and went back home despite the dangers they faced there from the bombing raids, and a lot were used as servants and treated badly.

I don't know whether to love or hate this program by the corporation.

1) My uncle and aunt only had 2 daughters; due to medical reasons couldn't/didn't have any others. So they became foster parents of a Navajo girl who was treated as one of the family. Her biological parents were alcoholics and abusers. So after her first school year, she asked if she could just stay for the summers also. It was a couple of years later they formally/legally adopted her.

2) I know there were "bad" fosters/sponsors of these kids; also Child Protection Services and other programs that were to protect or check up on these kids was highly understaffed and untrained.

3) The federal Govt. instead set up dormitories in towns with schools and facilities and set up programs for these Native Americans to attend schools. I lived in Joseph City, AZ so many of the kids were "bussed" into our schools and also in Holbrook and Winslow. The kids were from the reservation and they lived too far away from schools; in fact this is still going on in many reservations like the Gila Apache children are bussed off of their reservations every day to attend school at Ft. Thomas which is about 13 miles (18 miles from Bylas). So why are Native American children not having their own schools and teachers but instead are being shipped off to "white" schools?

4) The towns are predominately white Mormons who still have racist/bigot attitudes and thoughts. So racism is active and alive (not against African-Americans so much, rather against Native Americans). This was especially true when it was during Seminary days of "Tom Trails" movies and the seminary students would mock the speech and actions of the people on the film strips. https://youtu.be/d4x6xh1i41E

Side note: We actually had Tom Trails come and speak to us in Seminary; my teacher found him, I even worked with his son.

Native Americans asserted their cultural identity and often concluded that these type of programs were patronizing and demeaning. The term "cultural genocide" aways seemed a little extreme to me, but it made me get their drift. I'd feel the same way in that situation.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/12/2015 10:54PM by rationalist01.

I was on the loading end of the Program. As Elders on the Navajo Reservation in the 70's it was our job to assist the placement workers (who were usually seminary teachers doing a summer job) to get new and repeat customers signed up. The placement worker would do a sales job on the parents explaining how shipping your kid off for nine months was somehow a good thing.

Then come fall we'd help load up the crying children onto buses and off they'd go. Very sad and hard on both children and parents. Can you imagine sending your 2nd grader off to unknown people for nine months?

>>The Indian Placement Program, or Indian Student Placement Program was a program of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) from 1947 to 2000, in which LDS Native American students were placed in Latter-day Saint foster homes during the school year, where they would attend public schools and become assimilated into American culture[citation needed]. Cost of care was borne by the foster parent.

The program was initially developed to respond to the needs of Navajo teenagers and even younger children who were coming to parts of Utah to work. It was felt it would be better for them to get an education.[1] Only church members could participate in the program, which meant that children had to be eight to be involved. The program initially operated under the Relief Society and eventually became part of Latter-day Saint Social Services (now LDS Family Services).

Beginning in the 1970s, however, the Indian Placement Program came under criticism. In 1977, the U.S. government commissioned a study to investigate accusations that the church was using its influence to push children into joining the program. The commission rejected these accusations, however, finding that the program was largely positive, and enjoyed emphatic support both from Native American parents and white foster parents.[citation needed] However, the criticism of the program continued. Supporters believed that exposure to white culture was beneficial to Native American children, and that it improved educational and economic opportunities, while critics believed the program undermined the children's Native American identity.

In 2000 the last student graduated from the program, though the program never was officially discontinued.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Placement_Program