Mormon Settler Colonialism Volume 25

Inventing the Lamanite

Elise Boxer

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Hardback

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English

University of Oklahoma Press
28 October 2025

Series: New Directions in Native American Studies Series

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.

By: Elise Boxer
Imprint: University of Oklahoma Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9780806196046
ISBN 10: 0806196041
Series: New Directions in Native American Studies Series
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 28 October 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Elise Boxer (Sisseton and Wahpeton Dakota, citizen of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes) is Associate Professor of History and Native American Studies at the University of South Dakota. She is co-editor of From the Skin: Defending Indigenous Nations Using Theory and Praxis.

Reviews for Mormon Settler Colonialism Volume 25: Inventing the Lamanite

""Boxer brilliantly and bravely traces the history, legacy, and impact of the Pioneer and the Lamanite, two uniquely Mormon settler subject positions. A must read for scholars seeking a nuanced and complex reading of the racial logics that underpin settler colonialism in the United States, told through the lens of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."" - Hōkūlani K. Aikau (Kanaka ‘Ōiwi, Native Hawaiian) author of Chosen People, a Promised Land: Mormonism and Race in Hawai’i