“Lamanite” as a Religious Signifier and Settler-Colonial Encounter

The UVA Mormon Studies program hosted a Zoom panel on March 11, 2021, entitled “‘Lamanite’ as a Religious Signifier and Settler-Colonial Encounter.”

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Panelists:

Matthew Garrett (Bakersfield College) is the author of Making Lamanites: Mormons, Native Americans, and the Indian Student Placement Program, 1947-2000. His research centers on the intersection of indigeneity and religion as identity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries American West. His writings have also appeared in various journals including Great Plans Quarterly and AlterNative. He is a Professor of History at Bakersfield College where he teaches Native American history, United States survey history, and historical methods.
Read his articles “The Indian Student Placement Program” and “The Re-Convergence of Mormon and Indian History.”

 

Amanda Hendrix-Komoto (Montana State University) is an assistant professor in the History & Philosophy Department. She teaches classes in American Religion, the history of race and gender within the United States, and the American West. Her book Imperial Zions: Race and Religion in the American West is forthcoming from the University of Nebraska Press. Her article “Mahana, You Naked” received the best article prize from the Mormon History Association in 2017.
Read her article “Mahana You Naked.”
Find out more on her website profile.

 

Carolyn Howarter (University of Viginia) is a Research Scholar and Executive Assistant in Mormon Studies and earned her PhD in Anthropology at the University of Virginia in 2018. She spent a year and a half conducting ethnographic research in the Kingdom of Tonga focusing on Christianity, kinship, economics, and weaving. Her entry to Tonga as a field site and the Pacific as a research region resulted from her interest in the study of the spread of Mormonism outside the U.S. Her current research directions include Mormonism in the Pacific and the Pacific diaspora, as well as investigating connections between money, food, bodies, and religion.
Read her dissertation “A Feast, a Dance, and a Funeral: an Exploration of Contemporary Tongan Culture Across Three Christian Denominations.”
See her profile here.

 

Farina King (Northeastern State University), a citizen of the Navajo Nation, is Assistant Professor of History and affiliated faculty of Cherokee and Indigenous Studies at Northeastern State University, Tahlequah, Oklahoma. She is also the director and founder of the NSU Center for Indigenous Community Engagement. She received her Ph.D. at Arizona State University in U.S. History. King specializes in twentieth-century Native American Studies. She is the author of The Earth Memory Compass: Diné Landscapes and Education in the Twentieth Century.
Read her article “Indigenizing Mormonisms” from Mormon Studies Review.
Find out more on her website, https://farinaking.com.