Description

Ofelia Dominquez, a Peruvian member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, collected stones from the Arequipa temple site before it was built. She curates them on her shelf of mementos as heirlooms for past and future generations so that both her Indigenous great-grandmother and her Lamanite great-granddaughter will say of Ofelia, “she helped prepare the ground of Arequipa for the temple so that we could become eternally good relatives.”

In Ofelia’s place-based relatedness, there is no separation between “historicity” and “myth.” In her nonlinear time, there is no such thing as “anachronism.” Through her stone collection, Ofelia grounds her people deeply within the spiritual DNA of the Book of Mormon. Yet, the only thing that her Anglo Ex-Mormon brothers and sisters seem to see is the empirical lack of Book of Mormon DNA in her “Amerindian” body.

In this paper, I draw parallels between the material heirlooms that construct Lamanite identity and the mental heirlooms that ex-Mormons who pride themselves on their deconstruction fail to deconstruct, namely the racism against Native Peoples to which they often resort in order to cast shade on the very heirloom that taught them their racism: The Book of Mormon.

Speakers

Jason Palmer (He/Him)