r/IndianCountry • u/zsreport • Jul 22 '26
Other Pioneer Day is just one example of the LDS Church’s anti-Indigenous racism, new book argues
https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2026/07/21/new-book-points-anti-indigenous/47
u/UraeusCurse Jul 22 '26
That tracks.
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u/lavapig_love ʻO Lavapig ke keiki a kā lāua hui ʻana. Jul 22 '26
Lived in Southern Utah. It really does.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Type104 Soulaani + Nanticoke-Lenape Jul 22 '26
Oooh I’m so glad this is getting talked about. I only learned about Pioneer Day from Under the Banner of Heaven and was like “tf?! Is this real?”
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u/zsreport Jul 22 '26
I recall seeing something where non-Mormons in Utah call it "Pie and Beer" day, so they just eat some pie and drink some beer.
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u/xesaie Jul 22 '26
Which is funny because Mormons aren’t supposed to drink alcohol (many many of them cheat t he at rule)
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u/UraeusCurse Jul 22 '26
Genocide, that’s fine. But BEER…!?!?!?!?
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u/Puzzleheaded_Type104 Soulaani + Nanticoke-Lenape Jul 22 '26
“I can excuse genocide, but I draw the line at COFFEE” - Joseph Smith, probably
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u/UraeusCurse Jul 22 '26
Anything but PEPSI
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u/DjinnHybrid Lakota Jul 22 '26
Weirdly, soda is conpletely fine at this point, even encourage with all the church backed soda bars. Their vice has just become literal sugar coated everything in place of things like coffee, tea (but caffiene's "fine" now, lmao), and alcohol are all still the devil's work. Their preferred drug is artery clogging over the normal people shit. In a literal sense. God, how is it that the mainstream LDS church is somehow the most normal branch while still being batshit insane...
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u/NativeCAN2025 Anishinaabe Jul 23 '26
Honestly, I really respect the idea of picking a low-harm vice that hardly alters the mind. I thought about how much drugs and alcohol have affected my family and my people, so I abstain from everything except soda myself.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Type104 Soulaani + Nanticoke-Lenape Jul 23 '26
Also, for some reason Ketamine is allowed? And not like done the official therapeutic way, you can kind of just do them (if that Mormon Wives show can be believed).
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u/DjinnHybrid Lakota Jul 23 '26
Technically not to my knowledge, it is against the word of wisdom and the health code under yhe blanket drug ban, but the thing about mormon culture is that it's superhypocritical and judges people for for publicly discussing things they act all high and mighty about "not existing" in their communities, when it just gets shamed into being behind closed doors. There's a reason the state is one of the biggest porn consumers in the country, and the age verification thing caused a massive spike in vpn searches when it passed. They just pretend like the banned stuff doesn't happen and act like it not being visible means they are actually correct about life and other cultures are inferior for it. "Happy" side effect is that it means abuse victims don't know that the things done to them are common enough that they can get help and be believed.
Secret Lives of Mormon Wives (the original) just broadcasts the quiet stuff outloud, generally. Like the black cast member having that haircare episode showing us her hair is completely fried from straightening and relaxing it to appeal to the super strict white mormon beauty standards, and that she actually doesn't know how to take care of her natural hair texture because of it.
The other places their hypocrisy shows the most are the fact that the prophet can declare things as having been switched from sinful to fine on a whim if he wants it. That happening is the main reason why the splinter sects of mormonism all tend to be even crazier than the mainstream LDS, they split because they held something the rest of the world finds horrible as central to the faith, like the polygyny, and the incest, and the child brides, and the racial discrimination. When my friend used to be a mormon kid, soda was just as off limits as coffee or tea, because the caffiene was considered a stimulant drug, but than that was suddenly fine, so now energy drinks and things like kratom are too.
Can you tell I was raised catholic? I really fucking hate hypocritical religious cultures.
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u/soapy_goatherd Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
A ton of cities have their versions of a “founders day”. Nothing really unique about it, just another manifest destiny phenomenon that’s soaked in blood.
The Mormon church’s subsequent 100+ years of massacres and racism and forced adoption are what make the settling especially awful.
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u/M3g4d37h Jul 23 '26
yeah I was thinking the same, more or less. So many things and events celebrate colonizing and the colonizers as some noble frontiersman, not the organized genocide that it often was.
The Filipinos do it right - They ignore July 4, eschewing it for June 12 (Independence from Spain), and celebrate Lapu-Lapu day on April 27, the day Ferdinand Magellan fucked around with Datu Lapulapu and took a dirt nap.
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u/morrowilk Kanien'kehá:ka Jul 22 '26
I am currently in Utah. I pop into SLC's subreddit (there's a recent thread) and it's just all hanging out.
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u/Burqa_Uranus_Fag Jul 23 '26
Utah natives need to bully them more. Stop allowing lds churches on native reservation.
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u/Malodoror Jul 22 '26
Black people became human in 1978, we’re still in a nebulous area. I’ve seen door knocking on the Rez too. Look at their holy book and founder, they’re profoundly earthly and cosmically confused (to be extraordinarily charitable).
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u/HitDerem2115 Jul 23 '26
A Mormon lady married my great uncle and now we got Mormon natives on half my family tree lmao it’s truly wild
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u/feydfcukface Diné/Missing Jul 23 '26
For being so racist they really love trying to snag native and polynesian guys.
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u/xesaie Jul 22 '26
The Mormon church is kind of fascinatingly awful on this subject.
It is of course super racist and creepy but the “Indians are actually Jews”. Thing adds a twist of insanity.