Mormon Settler Colonialism: Inventing the Lamanite

According to the Book of Mormon, dissent wracked the Hebrew prophet Lehi’s family after they traveled to the Americas around 600 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 command...