If you pay attention Latter-day Saint history you can pinpoint the era in which American nationalism eclipsed the truth of our past as refugees and immigrants subjected to ethnic cleansing and oppression by the American state and American people. It is the point in which those first generations began to die and their grandchildren were being born, when the myth of the Mormon American pioneer developed as a way to legitimize the Saints in the eyes of and integrate the Saints into a society that had always hated and oppressed them. Here I attempt to recapture at least part of the truth of our past and address the dangers of this myth and false tradition of our fathers to us as a people.
Tag: Latter-day Saint Refugees
The Mormon Pioneers Were Refugees and Illegal Immigrants
Pioneer Day is today. Celebrating the first time a company of Saints entered the Salt Lake Valley to permanently settle there, it is the closest thing we Latter-day Saints have to our own church holy day (holiday.) But there is a lot to this story that we don’t tell on Pioneer Day, a lot of our history and precious truth that we leave on the cutting room floor. For example: The pioneers weren’t really pioneers. They were really refugees illegally immigrating into Mexico in order to escape the decades of pogroms, ethnic cleansings, exterminations, and genocide they had suffered in the United States. This article is an attempt to tell this story of our spiritual and literal ancestors so that we can apply to real lessons of our history to the world we live in today and make it a better place, a more Christ-like place, a Zion-place.