Document-based and oral histories of Diné experiences in the Mormon Indian Student Placement Program, 1945-2000

This study is a historical investigation of Diné/Navajo experiences in the Mormon Indian Student Placement Program, or what constituted an educational ecology both influenced by and that actively shaped the economic, political, and social institutions, ideologies, and pedagogies of the post-World War II era. Relying on available archival records, government reports, legal documents, periodicals, books and articles, private papers, and oral histories from survivors, this study exposes one of the largest systematic Native child removal projects in modern US history. Between 1945 and 2000, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—otherwise known as the Mormons, or LDS—colluded with federal and state bureaucrats to remove, relocate, and school tens of thousands of Indigenous children and youth in white Mormon foster families’ homes and in predominantly white and Mormon public schools. Importantly, oral testimonies of Diné who experienced the Placement Program help narrate this history and reveal Diné survivance—the combination of resistance and survival—of attempts to eliminate their culture, language, and traditional beliefs. The Mormons’ Indian education programming, while seemingly a new approach to schooling Native youth in the late-twentieth century, shared continuity with, and reproduced the genocidal education approaches of the infamous federal Indian boarding school system. At its height in the 1970s, the Placement Program was a transcontinental and transnational education program that operated in twenty-three U.S. States and three Canadian Provinces. By the year 2000, children aged six to eighteen from at least 75 tribal nations were involved. Between 48,000 to 62,000 children are estimated to have been enrolled in the Mormons’ Placement Program; the overwhelming majority, though, were Diné/Navajo. Approximately one in twelve of all Diné citizens were enrolled sometime during the program’s operation, or approximately 8-10% of the entire population of Navajo Nation. This human tithe on the Navajo Nation allowed the Mormons to capitalize off Native child removal, racialized Native communities, and propagated the American settler colonial project. This history illuminates the ongoing struggle for self-determined and sovereign Indigenous education, as well as the enduring power and survivance of Diné through k’é.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Educ Policy, Orgzn & Leadrshp

Grantor

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2025

Author dc:creator

• Tanner, M. Nathan

Contributors dc:contributor

• Span, Christopher M
• Pak, Yoon K.
• Hale, Jon N.
• Lawrence, Adrea
• Davis, Jenny L.

• Diné
• Navajo
• student experiences
• Mormon Indian Student Placement Program
• education history
• oral history
• settler colonialism
• federal Indian boarding school system
• LDS Church
• Indigenous survivance

Statement dc:rights

• © 2025 M. Nathan Tanner

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/129744

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F129744