Introducing the Guests and Episode Context

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the Donate button on the top right side of the page. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Galind. It's December 1, 2017, new new month, last month of the year, and what a great way to start the month with an interview with two really interesting people about a very important topic. Those of you who live in Utah will know that within the past few days, United States President Donald Trump has announced that he will be visiting Utah on Monday, December 4th to make an announcement where it's anticipated that he will be announcing that he will be shrinking the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments. So he'll also be visiting Welfare Square and visiting the LDS Church during his time in Utah. So I felt that it would be really important for us to cover this. And a good friend of mine, someone who those of you follow Mormon stories will know, Dr. Thomas Murphy, he reached out to me and said, john, we really need to cover this topic. And so today we're going to be interviewing two gentlemen about this important event, news event. The first is going to be Dr. Angelo Baca. He's a Native American filmmaker, a Navajo and a Hopi. He works in education, films, fiction and nonfiction. Graduate of the Native Voices Program at University of Washington. Angela Baca, Dr. Angela Baca, welcome to Mormon Stories.

Angelo Baca [00:02:19] Thanks John. Just one note of correction. I'm still halfway through my PhD program, so I'm not totally a doctor yet. I couldn't really diagnose you. I could probably just like talk you into something.

John Dehlin [00:02:33] Well, you know, thanks for that clarification, but we're excited for your we're excited to see your graduate work and what you do with your research. Tell us a bit more about yourself just so we know a little bit about you.

Angelo Baca [00:02:48] Yes, so I am actually from the San Juan county area. I am a member of the ANETH chapter. That's the one chapter that it's a holdout of the Utah Navajo chapters that hasn't supported the resolution on the Bears Ears National Monument. I, however, disagree with the majority of my chapter and I'm in full support of that monument. So I'm Navajo, and I'm Hopi. And in the traditional way, we introduce ourselves with our clans. So I say yate Angelo, baka yinishe, tlascit nishle kisani bashin tora, chitni dash, nakai dine dash. So those are my clans. That's how I'm related to a lot of different families and relationships, networks that know me through who my relatives are. So I have a different way of, like, relating to my social kinship and also accountability in my cultural way.

John Dehlin [00:03:49] Beautiful. Well, we're really honored to have you here, Mormon Stories. Thank you so much for joining us. And we're gonna ask you a little bit about your story in a minute. Is that okay?

Angelo Baca [00:03:58] Sure, sure. Thanks.

John Dehlin [00:04:00] All right. And joining us again on Mormon stories podcast is Dr. Thomas Murphy. Thomas Murphy was very important in my faith journey when I worked for Microsoft back in Seattle, late 1990s, early 2000s. Dr. Murphy was one of the first, if not the first academic to publish an article on Native American DNA in the Book of Mormon. And he caused a bit of a stir that led to him being summoned to a disciplinary council, which I was paying very much attention to at the time, but because the media was involved, and the media showed up actually at his disciplinary council, the disciplinary council was called off. And to this day, Thomas has never been tried for apostasy as he was threatened. So, Thomas Murphy, welcome back to Mormon Stories and give us just a little bit of an introduction for those who don't know you.

Thomas Murphy [00:05:01] Thank you. John Dehlin. Dr. John Dehlin. Nice to be back on Mormon Stories. I did complete a PhD in anthropology at the University of Washington, and I am currently the chair of the anthropology department at Edmonds Community College in Lynwood, Washington, where I do. I run an environmental anthropology field school in partnership with local Kos Salish tribes. And we do a lot of work

John Dehlin [00:05:30] to

Thomas Murphy [00:05:32] help restore the environment, take care of the bring tribal sovereignty issues right into the schools, and get students directly involved in that process. For example, we've done archaeological and ecological work at the site of the Point Elliot Treaty in Mukilteo, Washington, where salmon were exterminated for 50 years, and we helped bring him back. So we brought salmon back to the side of the treaty and make that a central part of our education in anthropology at Edmonds Community College and in a variety of other courses across campus.

John Dehlin [00:06:12] All right, well, it's an honor, as always, to have you back, Thomas Murphy, so thank you for joining us. Angelo, would you mind telling us a little bit about your story, kind of your Utah Mormon story, just so we can get a sense of your connections to Utah and your connections to the LDS Church.

Angela's Personal Connection to Bears Ears

Angelo Baca [00:06:31] Sure. So I grew up off and on the Navajo reservation. My family is based there in southern Utah. Montezuma Creek Landing, Monument Valley. I have relatives all up and down in that area.

John Dehlin [00:06:46] And what part of Utah is that? Just generally, for those who aren't from

Angelo Baca [00:06:49] Utah, that's generally San Juan County.

John Dehlin [00:06:52] So what is that? South Central, where is that?

Angelo Baca [00:06:54] Southeast.

John Dehlin [00:06:55] Southeast. Okay.

Angelo Baca [00:06:56] It's the one corner of the Four Corners.

John Dehlin [00:06:58] Got it.

Angelo Baca [00:07:00] And I think that's. That's already significant to say, because we are all automatically conditioned to think of maps and how they cut and demarcate and slice up landscapes. But we don't really have that sort of mindset. We just kind of go back and forth, all of those state lines. And, you know, that's really just something that people get stuck on a lot. It's like we didn't really have those kind of historically and culturally boundaries, but we have gone back and forth quite a bit. And I'm also part Hopi, so I'm also from the Tuba City area. So my family's kind of all Southwest origin. And I've been off and on in the city and back and forth and to the reservation. So Mormon influence has always been in my life. And I have family who are traditional Navajos, traditional Hopi practitioners. But there are also some family members who are Mormon and some of them who are not practicing, some who are practicing, and some who are both. They're traditional, and they're also very much Mormon in their membership. So I come from a really complicated and layered family of different belief systems that are doing interesting things with all their intersections.

John Dehlin [00:08:24] What was your relation to the church growing up, Angela?

Angelo Baca [00:08:29] Well, for me, I think that I was really interested in learning about what the church is and what they're about. And I would always ask the questions that were very critical, although at the time, I didn't see that they were very pointed. I think it only drove me further to understand what the underlying bedrock is of the foundation of this religion and how it's being utilized in our communities. And in particular, my experience in San Juan county, as we are aware right now, much of the lawsuits going on down there, there is discrimination. There is a sense of latent racism just underneath the surface. There's institutional violence. There's a lot of overarching dominance in all these systems, economic, political, educational, legal. And they're not run by us. They're run by white settler, Mormon families. And there's a huge disconnect between that culture and that belief system with ours. So we're expected to be conditioned and to learn on that side, but they're not expected to do the same thing for us. So there's always been this really deep tension down in that area, which is really coming to light now. As you can see with the case of the Bears Ears National Monument, it's been a flashpoint. It's not exactly something that's made the division. It's only helped to reveal what division was there previous to this.

John Dehlin [00:10:13] What can you tell us about the history of Bears Ears in Utah? Just so that we can kind of understand the historical significance of this piece of land. And, Thomas, you can jump in after. Angelo provides us with some history as well.

Angelo Baca [00:10:30] Well, the Bears Ears area is considered to be a sacred landscape for dozens of tribes. It just happens that there's a five tribe coalition consisting of the Nymph, the Hopi and the Zuni, and the Ute Mountain Ute tribes, and the Northern Ute tribes. So there's a real significance, cultural connection, a heritage that goes back generations, ancestry that's shared in that landscape. Everything from archaeological sites to herbs and medicines and hunting grounds to ancient burial sites and roads, places of prayer and ceremony. And those all deserve protection. And we've always known that. And so we've been trying to make sure that that landscape has been taken care of. And so people just don't really have a concept of how big the place is, the scope and the magnitude and how much is there that still needs to be studied and understood. We've always known that because it's in our stories, it's in our oral traditions, it's in our teachings, it's in the places that we still manage, steward, and take care of.

John Dehlin [00:11:49] Yeah. And just to speak a tiny bit more about that, as I was reading up on Bears Ears, it looks like settlements there began like 20,000 years ago. Is that right?

Angelo Baca [00:12:00] It keeps getting pushed back further and further. If you know anything about the current developments, John, about the. The potato that they found in Escalante and in Bears Ears, it's an ancient potato that's being cultivated, that's been cultivated by ancient Pueblo early dwellers there. And so they're trying to bring it back. And they have. They've actually grown this and looked at what it's made of and seeing, like, what kind of composition it has. And it's very hardy, it's very tough, it's super nutritious. And it's basically a superfood. And this really throws a monkey wrench into assumptions scientifically of like, where did the potato come from? A lot of people have assumptions that must have come from, from the south or from the ocean or somebody brought it down in the trade network somewhere. But what I love about it is like, we still don't know. And they keep pushing this further, further back. We find older and older settlements. We find foods that have been coming in these areas way earlier than people have thought before. And that deserves attention and research.

John Dehlin [00:13:10] So certainly several thousand years old as a, as a site where humans lived. Right.

Angelo Baca [00:13:15] It's like an 11,000 year old potato. So, you know, that just really kind of blows your mind when not too long ago, anthropologists used to think right between like 10 and 11,000 was when people were in the Americas, but obviously way, way farther than that.

Indigenous History and the Fight for Traditional Lands

John Dehlin [00:13:35] Okay, so various Native American tribes lived there for millennia. And then of course, I guess Spain, what? At some point Spain, you know, conquers this territory and declares it theirs. And then of course, at some point the United States is formed. And can you talk a little bit about how kind of the Mormon Utah pioneers get involved? And do you know anything about the history of sort of the colonization of this area, kind of when that happened, how it happened? If you can tell us anything about how Native Americans were treated once they were found there, or do you even know?

Angelo Baca [00:14:21] Well, first of all, there's differing opinions on the Spanish conquest. They did come in, but we drove them out. And I'm specifically referring to my Pueblo ancestors of the pueblo revolt in 1680, when they sent out runners to be messengers. And all the Pueblos of New Mexico, including the Hopi villages, revolted on the same day. They basically put down the Spanish forces and drove them out of the Southwest. And it was a good decade of peace before they would start to come back in full force again. So what we're talking about here isn't new. What we're looking at and witnessing and experiencing again because history is repeating itself, is a resistance to the settler colonial forces that are trying to stomp us out, that are trying to impede upon our traditional territories and make us subservient to a settler colonial system that really benefits their natural resource extraction, their desire for precious minerals and gold, and really just makes us an afterthought in their conquest. So for us, it's nothing new. We've always had people coming into our area trying to get one resource or another. When the United States came in, they actually gave Us, the reservation. And it's a large reservation, Navajo reservation. But they did so thinking it was a desert, empty, had nothing there. No lumber, no running water, nothing that they thought was of value until they discovered oil, uranium. Right. Precious minerals, all these things where they thought, okay, well, actually, there are some. That's something to consider, because where is it gonna stop? Where will the president actually stop impeding onto public lands and start going into Native American ones? Because there isn't really anything that he can do to say that there's a limit, because he's always gonna push the limit. He's pushing it legally right now anyway. So for me, I think the ultimate goal is, first it's public lands, national parks, national monuments, and then he's gonna look at tribal spaces.

John Dehlin [00:16:45] So just so we understand. So you were given the reservation, Given the reservation, allowed to have it, but then minerals and resources were discovered. Can you tell us just a little bit more about the political history of it? You know, at some point, was it declared, were people driven out? Tell us a little bit more about its history just so that we can kind of know what's happened there before today.

Angelo Baca [00:17:11] Well, this is where Bears Ears comes in, because, you know, Chief Manuelito, as he's known, he's actually a headman. He was a leader that people followed back in those days. And so when the United States army came in to round everybody up around what.

John Dehlin [00:17:26] Around what decade?

Angelo Baca [00:17:28] In the 18. I think it was 1860s around there.

John Dehlin [00:17:32] Okay.

Angelo Baca [00:17:33] There was incursions into the lands that were really designed to make this genocidal movement of all the people into one place and corral them into remote area in New Mexico called Fort Sumner, and we call it. So it's really like a place of suffering, and people really did have hardship and die there. And, you know, it was a few years of very terrible times. It was really kind of the precursor to the Holocaust. In fact, a lot of people kind of learned how the United States treated their native people then really streamline that process for World War II. So this was something that was endorsed by the United States army, but also endorsed by early settlers, like Mormons. Bears Ears, however, was a place of sanctuary. It was peaceful. It was remote. It was hard to get around in. Nobody knew any of the trails that were hidden, any of the places to go that we were hiding in. And so my family, my relatives and some of Benuelito's clan family also, they were up there in Bears Ears, and they never actually got caught. They eluded the United States Army.

John Dehlin [00:18:53] So your. Your ancestors Lived in Bears Ears area.

Angelo Baca [00:18:57] Yeah. Manuelito and his family, like the Batanis and the Kayelis. Like, there are lines of families and peoples who trace their ancestries back to these leaders and back to the place that is consistent of Bears Ears. And so my grandmother also can trace her grandmother's existence and living there, just underneath the ears as well. And I did a short documentary film about this as well to kind of help my grandmother tell that story so that you could see that actually, yes, we do have a connection there. But, you know, for me, I think it's also significant now that we're talking about Bears Ears as a place of safety to escape the United States government to try to round us up. It seems like they're doing that again. They're trying to make us be on a space that they designate, take it away from us, say that our claim to that place has no validity and it has no. No weight in any of their Western arguments, when really it's shared by all of us. You know, it's shared by the coalition, it's shared by the public. It's shared by, you know, everybody who is a citizen of this country, since that's what it is. It's federal lands.

John Dehlin [00:20:20] So at what point was it. Was. Was there a point in the history where it was declared or protected? Can you tell us a little bit about the history of its legal or protected status within the United States?

Angelo Baca [00:20:33] Well, it didn't really have that because I feel it's a very transitory place. People crossed in and out of that space a lot. And you can see evidence of the multiple cultures that were there. And the reservation boundary really was something that was designated by the United States and not by us. We did have Navajos living out there. We did have Utes living out there, but that's not what the United States designated as part of the reservation. But in the 1930s, it was proposed to be the Escalante National Monument. So there's a whole thing presented by Secretary, then, Harold Ickes, and he had a map that was almost. I think it was in excess of 2 million acres, and that included Bears Ears, Lake Powell, all the way up to Indian Creek. And this is like an old map. You know, this is like 1930s. Like, the government and the secretary already thought of having this place designated as a. As a national monument way back in the 30s. So this is not new. Whenever anybody talks about it being a midnight monument, it certainly is not.

John Dehlin [00:21:48] And having said that, I just. One of the first comments that I received and I want to hear maybe both of you guys comment on this. Dave Dix wrote, will be great to see that rolled back. Obama did so much horrible, destructive, dictatorial stuff in his last 60 days. So I am assuming that that's going to sound a little bit offensive to you guys. Tell us what Dave Dix is talking about there.

Angelo Baca [00:22:16] I have no idea. Tom, you want to take a stab at that?

Thomas Murphy [00:22:21] Oh, wow. All right. So the Bears Heroes Coalition has been, you know, it's a group of five nations, Dene Ute, Hopi. Who else am I leaving out? And Zuni. Yeah. And so they've been advocating for quite a few years for the protection of this area. And they initially engaged in negotiations with the Utah delegation and with Representative Rob Bishop, for example, and sought protection of Bears Ears. And unfortunately, in the proposals that Bishop put together, there weren't really true protections put in place. In fact, there were provisions that would undermine tribal sovereignty and would undermine the ability of the tribes to be able to manage their own land, in particular, to make it subservient to that, the rule of basically the white Mormon settlers in San Juan county and across Utah. And so the Bear Jers Coalition went

John Dehlin [00:23:45] to

Thomas Murphy [00:23:47] the executive branch, to President Obama, where they could be heard, because they weren't being heard in Utah. And I think what's really interesting here is that, you know, Mormons in Utah really had the first chance to show that they're serious about rejecting racism, as the church is now stating, they had an opportunity to work with the tribes to help protect this land on terms that were mutually beneficial to both. And the Utah delegation failed in its endeavor. And as a result, the tribes had no choice but to turn to the federal government because the state and local government was undermining tribal sovereignty.

John Dehlin [00:24:24] Why was that? What was the motive to, you know, what are the political or industrial motives around this land? I mean, we can assume, but can you tell us more explicitly?

Thomas Murphy [00:24:36] Well, you know, part of the concerns, but these were addressed both by Bishop's legislative proposal as well as by Obama's proposal. There were concerns about coal and uranium as resources that were in the area. And actually, the provisions that both Bishop. The maps of both the Bishop proposal and the Obama proposal.

John Dehlin [00:25:01] This is Rob Bishop, right? Congressman Rob Bishop.

Thomas Murphy [00:25:03] Yeah. The provisions that they put together, scaled down from what the tribes had requested, from 1.9 million acres to 1.3 million acres, the land to protect. And there was a general agreement across the board that there are antiquities of significant cultural importance, as well as plants and animals worthy of protection, natural resources as the settler colonists call them, that were worthy of protection. There was general agreement around that. But what happened in both Obama and Bishop's proposal was to scale it down from 1.9 to 1.3 million acres to protect some of those potential economic areas where mining might. Might take place.

John Dehlin [00:25:56] And we've lost Dr. Murphy for just one second. I think his Internet's frozen ironic about the reaction.

Thomas Murphy [00:26:20] The big difference was a question of tribal sovereigns in managing Bears Ears, where the Bishop proposal had made the tribal voice subservient to that of white Mormon settler colonists. And so Obama, unlike the current delegation in Utah, listened to the tribes and took their needs and desires seriously. Today you have Orrin Hatch making statements claiming there's native support for taking back the monument. And as Angelo mentioned, there's only one chapter where there's even much support at all. But as a whole, the elected representatives of the five tribes involved, plus many other tribes that issued statements of support, is overwhelmingly in favor of the national monument, not just at the small scale that Obama had proposed, but at an even larger scale. And so the irony of the statement from the commentator is that the Utah settler colonists, the Mormon settler colonists that are objecting to federal overreach, they are themselves attempting to impose settler colonial rule onto native communities that are the majority now in San Juan county, and they're trying to oppose that authority, and that they're objecting then to the federal government stepping in and imposing its authority upon them. So it's ironic they're objecting to that the federal government is doing something similar to what they are already doing to Native Americans. And the reason the federal government had to step in there is because they weren't giving Native Americans adequate voice in the first place.

John Dehlin [00:28:17] So Ryan Wilkinson writes, it's an egregious error to assume that someone interested in Mormon Stories podcast would also be interested in today's podcast concerning the national monuments. If you want to discuss these kinds of issues, that's fine. It's your podcast. But it erodes the credibility of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm unsubscribing. Using the podcast as a blatant platform for political beliefs is disgusting. My question to you guys about that is, tell us more about the Mormon connection here. Is this a Mormon story? And if so, how

Thomas Murphy [00:28:53] you want me to go on that, Angela?

John Dehlin [00:28:54] Or you want to both comment. But who wants to go first?

Angelo Baca [00:28:59] I'll just make one quick point and then I'll let Tom go at it, because I think he's got a great view. But I Always assume that people know the Book of Mormon. And if they know it well, then they understand that. The first paragraph in the introduction of the Book of Mormon addresses Lamanites as ancestors or descendants of American Indians. And that alone is first and primary. And you should know, understand, research, figure that out. What is your relationship to American Indians, to indigenous people here? That is something you don't talk about in the church. That is something they don't talk about in schools. And that is something you need to talk about now, because we are your reckoning. We're not going away, and we're staying in our own territories. And so we will fight for our rights. We will fight for our lands. And it's up to you guys. The onus is on you Mormons, if that's what you call yourself and you believe in the Book of Mormon, to understand where do American Indians fit in your belief system, in your political system, in your lives. That is a responsibility of you as a Mormon. All right, go ahead, Tom.

John Dehlin [00:30:13] Thanks, Angelo. That was powerful.

The Book of Mormon and Native American Identity

Thomas Murphy [00:30:15] Yes, and thank you, John, for letting us talk about this, which is really. Is a Mormon story. And I think it really all ties in through the Book of Mormon. And I just want to tell that in a. In a parable, if you will. Okay, Imagine that you are a resident of Blanding, Utah, okay? And you've got a cemetery where your grandmother's buried, okay? And the Navajo people come in and push you out of that cemetery, okay? And they then dig up your grandmother's grave, and they say they found a set of plates there. And in fact, the diary of your grandmother, they found her story and her family story for a thousand years, and they dug that. That up. And they said in that story, interestingly, they said, well, it turns out that your grandmother was wicked, and because of her wickedness, she lost the right to this land and that the land now rightfully belongs to the Navajo rather than to those white Mormon settlers in Blanding, Utah. That's essentially the story of the Book of Mormon. If you flip it around. The Book of Mormon is based upon settler colonial myths about Native American and these. Well, it can ask just a very, very basic question. If you found that diary, if somebody else found the diary of your grandmother, who would that diary belong to? Would it belong to you and your family, or would it belong to the people who stole the land and took the diary from you? That's the story of the gold plates. The gold plates would never belong to Joseph Smith. Had he found them, actually found them, and where he says he found those Gold plates. There were Indigenous people there. There was a Seneca. Seneca are one of the nations of the Haudenosaunee. The Haudenosaunee include five nations, more commonly known as the Iroquois, including some of my ancestors who are Mohawk. And the. The Book of Mormon would have never belonged ethically to Joseph Smith to begin with, nor to what would become the LDS church. If that story was in fact genuine, as the apologists, for example, claim, then that story should belong to the indigenous people from whose land it was taken. And so. So this all really connects what we've got in the origin story of Mormonism, in the Joseph Smith story is a sacred looting, a looting of Indigenous artifacts. Now, the gold plates themselves, again, may never have really existed, but Joseph Smith did use genuine Native artifacts we call seer stones. And many of them have been connected directly to the Indigenous peoples of New York and all the way to Illinois. Things such as they were what archaeologists call gorgets. Joseph Smith called the breastplate. And those were the Woodruff stones, for example, seer stones. There's a seer stone that Joseph Smith found in Nauvoo that Angela and I, in an article we recently published called Rejecting Racism in Any Form, Religion, Rhetoric and Repatriation, or Latter Day Saint Religion, Rhetoric and Repatriation. In that article, we identified that seer stone as probably a spindle whorl from an old weaving. Well, spindle whorl, basically. And so. So Joseph Smith was working with astral artifacts. He also dug up at least many of his, or at least one of his treasure hunting activities occurred in known Haudenosaunee ruins. Probably more certainly other treasure seekers that he associated with dug up a number of ruins, including graves of the Haudenosaunee people. Joseph Smith himself, traveling across during Zion's Camp, dug up in Illinois the grave of a person he called Self Zelph. And this skeleton, he claimed, was a Lamanite from whom the curse of a dark skin had been partially removed. And then they dig this skeleton up, and Wilford Woodruff even takes one of the thigh or the femur of this person, takes it to Missouri with him, and, you know, actually feels guilty after the fact and buries it. And Joseph Smith also purchased stolen artifacts. We know them as the papyri from the Book of Abraham. These artifacts came in to the possession under dubious circumstances of Antonio Libelo, a soldier who was basically in the aftermath of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, raiding and plundering the tombs and pyramids of Egypt. And then, you know, Joseph Smith himself paid for these papyri but nonetheless, the papyri were stolen. And so there's this long history in Mormon origin stories of the plundering of indigenous artifacts, whether from Egypt or from Native America. And so when the settlers came west into Utah, they continued this practice of plundering. In the conquest of Utah Valley, the Timpanogos people, they, after Mormons slaughtered over 50 of the men of the Timpanogos Utes, they worked with the army to give those skeletons to the army to take back west to do tests. A lot of these tests that were done on Native skulls were to try to justify what was a form of racism disguised as science and measuring different sizes of skulls to try to claim that some people were more intelligent than others or more entitled to civilization or to the fruits of civilization. And Mormons were directly implicated in that. Mormons also engaged in warfare with some of the tribes of Utah, including the Black Hawk War. In the Black Hawk War, Black Hawk himself was actually a baptized Mormon, and he led other baptized Mormons back against the settler colonist Mormons over their depredations of the land and their inability to follow through on the promises that they'd had to protect the land and resources upon which the tribes of Utah depended. And when Black Hawk eventually died, the Elias Latter Day Saints dug up his grave and took the skeleton to Salt Lake City and they put it on on display in the LDS Church Museum. So you've got this really long history of looting and now let's take it to San Juan County.

John Dehlin [00:38:17] Okay, okay, wait, wait, wait, wait. So can I. Can I pause you for a second, Tom?

Thomas Murphy [00:38:22] Oh, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:38:23] So, Angelo, you know, growing up as a privileged white middle class Mormon from Texas, when I heard stories about Joseph Smith and Zelf and the plates and Native American lore, what I'm about to say is probably going to be insensitive or offensive, but it's like, oh, cool, Native American artifacts. And he found the bones and he found ancient artifacts and cool. But the truth is, my guess is this is very sensitive stuff when we're talking about, in a sense, a colonizing people discovering bones, burial sites and, or artifacts of Native people. Can you tell us, as a Native person, you know, what these sorts of stories and experiences and encounters feel like from your perspective and how it's not just sort of like, cool, we found an arrowhead, how this is deeply culturally sensitive for you?

Angelo Baca [00:39:42] Right. I mean, I think that's right on point. Because, you know, what Tom is talking about is a form of repatriation, form of return. And that return is about healing. And that's basically our relative, you know, that people are digging up. That's basically beloved materials, culturally significant items, medicine, like embodiments of different spirits and entities and deities that were revered and loved and cared for. And there's a balance that has to be restored. It's been disrupted, it's been interrupted, it's been desecrated. And it's hard for me to try to express that to people who, like yourself, may not know, growing up as a white Mormon, what that means from my perspective, because I've always grown up that way. I've been taught that way as a traditional and Hopi person, Navajo and Hopi person, knowing my language, knowing our ceremonies and songs and the things that my grandmother taught me, who was very traditional, didn't know anything about English, just spoke Navajo. And they were the ones who actually like, helped me to understand that actually we are the ones who still carry on our traditions intact. And if you look at the, what Joseph Smith's story was, he was lost. You know, he was wandering around from church to church in his little town, trying to figure out what he was doing until like, basically, if you believe the stories, indigenous angels came and showed him what to do. So there is lots of native influence in the story of the Book of Mormon and also in the development of the culture. And people don't understand that. They haven't thought or researched or looked at it hard enough to know what is the offense that has been caused by him culturally appropriating some of our thoughts, our beliefs and our ways, robbing graves and then making that a standard practice for people who are still doing that in places like Utah. You know, this is something that I think you'll have to reconcile with and acknowledge that, you know, it's still going on. The historical injury, the trauma, the injustice is alive and well today.

John Dehlin [00:42:07] Well, what about. And this is going to be obvious to some, and some would say not worth repeating, but just the basic narrative of the Book of Mormon, that Native Americans were cursed with dark skin because of their wickedness from God way back when. Does that have significant modern implications your mind?

Angelo Baca [00:42:32] I think so. I think a lot of modern day LDS members like to dance around it. They tiptoe around it because it sounds racist, because it is, but they don't want to engage it because it's uncomfortable for them to think that's what actually what they meant. But historically, in all those old documents, that is exactly what they meant. Even the United States Constitution isn't for all it's for privileged white rich men. You know, it's not talking about the black slaves, it's not talking about women, it's not talking about American Indians. It's a specific demographic that it's privileging. And people need to understand that and acknowledge it because they keep evoking these ancient documents, the Constitution, the Book of Mormon, the pearl of great price, whatever, right. But there's holes in it and they need to look at that very critically and understand that it is actually lacking and it needs to be engaged more. I wish every single church, every ward, every seminary session had a mandatory curriculum about American Indians, the church's relationship to them. It should be standard operating procedure, especially if we're in the Book of Mormon over and over and over again in the introduction and we're supposed to be the ones to return the gospel to its truest form in the last days. Well, where are you Mormons? We're waiting to have this conversation.

John Dehlin [00:44:11] Yeah. The purpose of the Book of Mormon is to bring the gospel back to the blood of Israel, which was the Native American people. So, I mean, that's why the book was written according to its introduction. Is that right, Dr. Murphy, what they say?

Thomas Murphy [00:44:28] Yes. Well, in fact, you know, what's really interesting is you have people like Tara Givens, who some years ago wrote an entire book about the Book of Mormon and the various theories of the Book of Mormon over the years and neglected entirely Native American voices. This book is supposed to be about the so called Lamanites, yet he ignores the viewpoints of indigenous, even indigenous Mormons, let alone the people from whose land the book supposedly came. And you know, that's pervasive in this. What you're calling that neo apologetic community is it's pervaded by white supremacy. Now even people like Paul Reeves that appear to be writing to some degree against it are not actually engaging in the native voice, engaging native people in the conversation. So by including Angelo and many of the other interviews you've done on your Losing the Lamanite series is a very important contribution to Mormon studies as a field, because I think the neo apologists avoid it because it's uncomfortable. As Angelo said, how do you talk about the dark skin as a curse from God when it's so obviously racist with somebody who's being labeled that way? And I want to point out another really critical element related to the Book of Mormon. So the Book of Mormon story, as almost all your listeners know, tells this story of these immigrants, recent, relatively recent immigrants from the old world coming to the New world and then splitting into those two groups, the Nephites and the Lamanites, and they war with each other for about a thousand years. The Book of Mormon credits all the ancient civilizations, not to the Lamanites, but to the Nephites, giving credit to the intelligence, the sophistication, the obvious achievements of the indigenous peoples, not to the people who are actually here, but to an imaginary group called Nephites that we now know from DNA evidence didn't exist. And so it credits civilization to this ancient white race and then denigrates American Indians as ancestors of Lamanites. In particular, he denigrates them by accusing them of holocaust, of accusing them of exterminating the Nephites. Now, if we think about that, the Book of Mormon being published in 1830, what also happened in 1830, Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal act removed from. Began the process of removing the tribes from the eastern portion of the United States. Actually, some of the removals had begun even before then, but made it very much a federal policy of genocide. And at the same time that the United States itself was engaging in genocidal acts against Native Americans. The Book of Mormon comes along and accuses Native Americans of genocide against white people, when that never actually happened. And so you really get a book that is fundamentally problematic. And when people grow up on those stories and then they go out into a place like Bears Ears, such as happened regularly over, you know, over a century, more than a century of Mormon occupation of San Juan county. The Mormon settlers would raid the tombs, they would raid the ruins, and they would take pots and artifacts and sometimes chip them off of the stone walls and take them home to put in their living room. And of course, native people noticed and they complained. And eventually, in the 1980s and 1990s, there were raids in Blanding that targeted this artifact theft. And in fact, the biggest raid in the history of antiquities in the United States occurred right in Blanding, Utah. And as a result of that raid, several Mormons would be prosecuted and they'd get light sentences. But it was so traumatic for them that they couldn't see that anything was wrong with doing this looting. And when they did get prosecuted, there were a series of suicides, in fact, three suicides in the community of people that were involved in this artifacts when they started to come to terms with what they'd actually done, because it just, to them, nothing was wrong with picking up a potsherd here or potsherd there, because after all, Joseph Smith did it as part of the Mormon origin story and presented us perfectly okay. But really, even in Joseph Smith's day, it was horrific to dig up somebody else's grave and take items from that and then proclaim to produce scripture from them.

John Dehlin [00:49:49] Yeah. So in some real sense, as I'm thinking about this, not only was the United States obviously built upon the Native American civilizations, but the whole founding of the LDS Church, in the Mormon narrative was. Was built on the backs of sort of a really false and racist narrative about Native American people. And so much of the early missionary efforts and the whole thrust of the Book of Mormon, which the church claims is the cornerstone of Mormonism, sort of comes at the expense of Native American peoples in a way that's really denigrating to them. Angelo, would you mind talking to us a bit about tribal sovereignty so that we can turn our attention to the monument and Trump's recent decision and how that all plays out?

Tribal Sovereignty and Monument Designation

Angelo Baca [00:50:39] Yeah, I really think that people have a very rudimentary, if at all, a working knowledge of Native Americans, of indigenous peoples here in the United States, and they don't understand. There's a lot of common misperceptions, a lot of myths flying around, misinformation, or lack of information that they have about indigenous people here. And, you know, one of those is that they think, you know, that we're all gone, we don't exist, that we were killed off or we died out, but we're not. And, you know, some of us actually have recognition from the federal government through treaty relationships, which are a form of the highest law of the land. It's right up there with the United States Constitution. Those are not just, you know, little laws that people put into place. Like, these were solid agreements made with one nation to another nation. And that is sovereignty. That is being an autonomous, independent, wholly functioning nation with its own culture, language, history, its own ways, language. And so there are all of these different elements that actually distinguish it as its own indigenous community, its own nation. And the United States in its infancy, went around and made these agreements with a lot of these nations to get recognition from its other older brothers and sisters out there in Europe, out there in the Mediterranean, out there in anywhere that they could to be recognized as a fledgling country, that it would be, you know, eventually the United States of America. And so they still have those binding agreements, and they still need to honor them. So many of those treaties were broken and not honored. And it's just, as you say, it is a basis of this country functioning on the backs and the exploitation of indigenous peoples and their lands. And settler folks like Mormons, like People who went out west in quest of manifest destiny, like, those people benefited from that. And they don't understand that they got so much by taking a lot from other people. The ones who are trying to, you know, find another place and make a living for themselves and try to, you know, have their own homesteads or ranches. Like, that dish didn't come from anywhere. That was stolen and taken from somebody else. We were here. And I think that plays right into the national park system, the national monument system. Like a lot of these places, like Yosemite and Yellowstone, Native people were already there. We were taking care of those places. We were managing them, we were stewarding them, and they were sacred places to us. That's why they were so beautiful and well intact when you got here. Because we took care of them. We didn't exploit them, we didn't decimate them. We didn't make sure that, you know, every living thing was totally, you know, taken out and used. It's like. No, they were managed. It was curated. It was, you know, made over generations to supplement the following generation. And so we. The United States comes in and designates these places in those frameworks of parks and monuments. They always say that, you know, this is a pristine environment, that it was ecologically undisturbed, when that's completely not true. It was always visited by us, by indigenous peoples. We regularly maintained a good relationship with all of our relatives. Plants, animals, the elements, you know, the waters, the trees, all the other living things that are out there. And so people forget that. They forget that we were the original conservationists, and we were here for a long time, and we know how to do it still, and we know how to do it well.

John Dehlin [00:54:51] I love it. Okay, talk to us about what Obama did. Just we talked about it briefly before. What did Obama do and why did he do it? Angelo, do you want to talk about that? And then, Thomas, do you want to add anything? Go ahead.

Angelo Baca [00:55:03] Angelo, you're talking about in terms of designating the Bears Ears National Monument.

John Dehlin [00:55:09] Yeah. So what was it before and then what did Obama do?

Angelo Baca [00:55:13] Well, I think that Obama was very careful and calculated about wanting to make a decision about whether or not to make that space into a national monument.

John Dehlin [00:55:22] What was it before? It was public land. A lot of it, right?

Thomas Murphy [00:55:25] Yeah.

Angelo Baca [00:55:26] It's all federal land. There's this.

John Dehlin [00:55:28] Which means what? What does it mean if something's federal land? It just means the US Government owns it.

Angelo Baca [00:55:32] Yeah. Basically, it just means that it's really under the purview of the federal government, like Bureau of Land management mostly in that area, and that those lands aren't able to be owned unless there's an agreement being worked out between the BLM and any of the people in the area. Because some of the BLM lands are multi use. You know, people like, they'll graze animals or they'll, they'll come out there and you know, ranch. And some of them actually do have exploratory natural resource projects happening. And so it's very complicated. It's super layered. And I think that adds to the jurisdictional mess of it all because you have all of these different demarcations of jurisdictions that overlap and incur on each other. You have like Bureau of Land Management, United States Forest Service, the Bureau of Indian affairs, the Navajo Nation, San Juan county, the state of Utah. It is a giant tangled mess over there.

John Dehlin [00:56:41] And then the Forest Service and is it the Park Service, both manage parts of the territory, is that right?

Angelo Baca [00:56:47] Well, for the national monument, it's the Forest Service and yeah, the Bureau of Land Management.

John Dehlin [00:56:56] Okay.

Angelo Baca [00:56:59] So there's like a history of people who have been constantly let down by these entities, and so they haven't put a lot of faith or stock into the national monument. But I say that really it doesn't matter because what's happening is an opportunity for all of the nations again to step up and take responsibility for maintaining that place in the vehicle of collaborative management. And so that's why I think it's important as a project, as an idea, as something that we could do together. And I think that was really appealing to Obama and to Secretary Sally Jewell. And I think that was something that was significant in trying to change the landscape, if you pardon the pun there, about how it is that we can make land management better. And I think that was something they had been thinking about the entire time during that presidency, but didn't know how to do it. And then Standing Rock happened. And Standing Rock by itself is such an indicator where we are as a country.

John Dehlin [00:58:11] Tell us about that really quick.

Angelo Baca [00:58:13] Because Standing Rock is significant for the incursion of indigenous territories, its environmental racism, it's, you know, state violence that's being done upon native peoples, and the very little to no intervention on any federal agency parts. And so Obama didn't really want to touch that very much. However, I think that he tried to exhaust every single legal mechanism that he could. And then once he saw that that wasn't going anywhere, you know, there wasn't really much he could do except say that he did everything he could. And this was One of the things that he could do for Native Americans at the very end of his presidency was make the Bears Ears landscape a national monument.

John Dehlin [00:58:58] And what was the. Oh, go ahead, Tom Thomas, did you want to add anything?

Thomas Murphy [00:59:02] I think it's very important to point out that the Antiquities act, under which the Antiquities act is what gives the President the authority to designate a national monument. Okay. And as the name antiquities implies, the intent of Antiquities act is to help protect important cultural resources that may be under threat from other exploitation, some form of exploitation. And so it gave the President the power to protect those places that may be sacred. They may have important ecological, environmental, cultural significance. And so there'd been many monument declarations. In fact, several in Utah led eventually to national parks and been great for the economy and tourism in Utah. This is the very first and the only national monument designated at the request of Native Americans. And so if you think about the intent of. Of the Antiquities act to protect Native cultural resources, this is the first time that Native tribes were part of the discussion. They were part of the conversation and brought something forward. And this, to me, is what makes it so egregious when we look at the actions of Mormon legislators in Utah, who are actually ignoring the public sentiment, which is quite strong in favor of public lands even in Utah, and ignoring the voices of the elected Native American leaders and kowtowing to private, predominantly mining industries. But I think there's also just a rather latent racism in this approach. I think that there are a lot of people that resented the Obama administration to begin with, the first African American president. And there's this latent racism that's pervasive in much of the United States, where people resented the fact that there's this African American president doing something for Native Americans and doing it in their backyard. And so I think that a lot of the animosity that we see from Orrin Hatch and Rob Bishop, for example, is a latent form of racism.

John Dehlin [01:01:25] What are they mad about? What if Rob Bishop. And so what was the reaction to Obama's decision? Who was mad and why were they mad and who was happy?

Thomas Murphy [01:01:35] So the Utah state legislature, the governor passed, or the legislature passed a resolution asking for the monument to be rescinded. The Utah delegation, especially Orrin Hatch, have been strongly pressuring Ryan Zinke, who's the Secretary of the Interior, to scale back this monument. And again, it's being led by elected officials in Utah who are not actually representing either the Native American voices or the white settler colonists voices, both of which favor public lands. Okay. Native Americans, more so than the settler colonists, but they're rejecting the voices of their own people in order to either get back at the Obama administration or to benefit the oil and I mean, the coal and uranium mining industry, which, you know, I'm not even sure that that's the real reason, because the ability to access the coal and the uranium has been around for decades, and those areas where they were active and where there was an expected return on the investment are already being mined. I think there's really, really something very deeper about this. And this is where I think, if we really come down to the question of who controls that local community. Again, San Juan county is a majority Native American, about 53%. Okay. The Mormons make up a minority, yet they control two out of three county commission seats. Okay. Phil Limon, one of the county commissioners, in a recent newspaper article, used the analogy that the federal government coming and getting involved is like intervening between a parent and his child and that the government has no right to get into these family squabbles. And I read that and I thought, I wonder who he thinks the children are. There's a paternalistic racism here that Phil Lyman seems to think, or appears to think from this quote, that Native Americans are his children. Why does he think that? Well, that's the way the Book of Mormon treats them. That's the way the stories of U.S. conquest of the west treats Native Americans as children, as wards of the government that need to be managed, and instead of as sovereign nations, as Angela has explained, capable of governing themselves, and in fact, quite a bit better at it when it comes to managing resources than the United States has been.

John Dehlin [01:04:29] We have a question from Gabriel Misla, who was one of our participants in the Losing the Lamanites series. He's a listener from Puerto Rico. Great story. Gabriel writes, I could be wrong, but I think I read that not all tribes agreed with Obama's designations. Is this accurate? Why are there some tribes that oppose it? My understanding is that they are a minority of the tribes that agree with what Obama did, but I don't understand why they would think that way. So, Angelo, does Gabrielle have it right or not?

Thomas Murphy [01:05:04] No.

Angelo Baca [01:05:05] I think in the media, they are vastly under reporting the whole story, and what they are showing is their own kind of discrimination bent on Native Americans as well. See, this goes back to the lack of information or the dearth of education about Native Americans. They have their own assumptions, and it comes through in the press, in the journalistic reports. They don't actually get a lot of it right. And I would say about 75% of any of the things that are written about this have almost little to no Native American voices. They'll reference them, they might even cite it, but they hardly ever talk to any of the elders, any of the actual elected officials, the leaders who represent us, the people who are involved with the actual on the ground proposals and planning with the monument. And, you know, it's all this really kind of peripheral information that they're reporting on. So, you know, I tried to curb that myself by doing my own documentary on it, and it's called Shash Ja Bears Ears. And it follows the intertribal coalition from the Native perspective with those elders telling the story themselves, us following them through their journey on trying to persuade the Obama administration to make it into a national monument all the way from Utah to Washington, D.C. until it actually happens.

John Dehlin [01:06:35] How do people find that? Is there a link to that documentary?

Angelo Baca [01:06:40] There's a link to the website that my film is in tandem with, and I haven't released it widely because it's still in the film festival circuit, but there are clips of various parts of the film that are on the website. I've tried to make it a repository of information so that people can come and access it and learn more because it isn't really reported that well. So I'm trying to get another perspective on it out there.

John Dehlin [01:07:10] So what, what's the website?

Angelo Baca [01:07:12] It's, I think it's shasha bearsearswordpress.com or something like that.

John Dehlin [01:07:20] Yeah, I think I'll need you to send me the link for that.

Angelo Baca [01:07:24] Yeah, I'll have to send it to you. We'll be adding a lot more content to it really soon.

Why Trump Moved to Shrink Bears Ears

John Dehlin [01:07:30] Why. Why did, why did Donald Trump do this? Anyone like, what's, what's the motivation? Is this big business? Is this just distraction from the political heat he's receiving? What is, what is this about? Why now? Anyone. Anyone know?

Thomas Murphy [01:07:48] Do you want to go.

Angelo Baca [01:07:49] Go ahead, Tom.

Thomas Murphy [01:07:50] Okay. So that Donald Trump is responding to the requests of the Utah delegation. Okay. The elected representative.

John Dehlin [01:08:00] So Bishop wants this and.

Thomas Murphy [01:08:02] Yeah. And. Well, Orrin Hatch, probably. Orrin Hatch wants this most influential in this regard.

John Dehlin [01:08:07] Okay.

Thomas Murphy [01:08:08] From what in my. I've been on quite a few conversations with reporters about this subject today, and that seems to be the general consensus. But the. I want to make a comment about that previous question. Yes, the tribes do support the designation of the monument. They're the ones who requested it in the first place, particularly through the Bears Ears Coalition, as Angelo explained. And what Trump has done is responded to the elected representatives in Utah who've advocated for scaling back or overturning or eliminating the monument designation that Obama had made. And so what Donald Trump did is

John Dehlin [01:08:49] he assigned real quick, when something's declared a monument, what does that mean?

Thomas Murphy [01:08:55] Okay, so when it's declared a monument, it enters a protected status. And then in this case, there was a governing entity created that included tribal representation as well as the representation of the different federal agencies in managing and coming up with a management plan and then enacting what that national monument preservations are gonna look like in detail. Okay, got it. And so that process barely got started, obviously. Cause this was at the end of the Obama administration. So Trump then ordered Ryan Zinke, who is the Secretary of Interior, to do a review of not just Bears Ears, but the Escalante Monument as well. Basically the larger monuments that had been created during the Clinton and Obama administrations and asked for review of those. And Zinke, who claims to be favorable towards tribal sovereignty, but is not acting that way at all in this case. He came to Utah and met almost exclusively with white, predominantly Mormon legislators and local business people. Very brief, limited meeting with tribal representatives and basically shut their voices out. They also had a public comment period during which people had the opportunity to make public comments that were overwhelmingly in favor of protecting Bears Ears as a national monument and maintaining that monument status. And Ryan Zinke has ignored those requests and made a recommendation for scaling back significantly, Bears Ears monument. Now, what Donald Trump is going to declare on Monday is not entirely known, but there's a number of press reports out that are speculating that he's going to reduce the monument by about 85% and separate it into maybe two different monuments with different names and basically eliminate most of the protections for what Obama designated as Bears Ears. Now, his actions are probably illegal, and so they're undoubtedly going to be fought in the courts. In fact, the Bears Ears Coalition, the tribal coalition, is ready to fight in the courts. And that's where the battle is going to go next. And one other thing I wanted to interject, if I could, is that Angelo and I have written an article that we'll send you a link on as well, called Rejecting Racism in Any Form, Latter Day Saint Rhetoric, Religion and Repatriation. And in that, we look at that history behind the looting, in the creation of Latter Day Saint scripture and and its implications for what's happening in San Juan and Bears Ears, and also with the Bundy family and the occupation of Malheir Wildlife Refuge. We look at that in the context of this abuse of native sacred artifacts and sacred bodies by Mormons. And what we suggest is if the LDS Church is serious about rejecting racism, that it could in fact repatriate stolen items, Seer stones, for example, the papyri or lands. In this case, it could support the request of the Bears Ears Coalition to have at least some control returned of these lands, at least a partial repatriation of these stolen lands.

John Dehlin [01:12:56] Got it. Okay. So Hatton Bishop and others asked Trump to do this, probably for mining companies and other businesses interested in extracting natural resources, is that right?

Thomas Murphy [01:13:11] That's what they're saying. But it's hard to believe that because those companies have had access to exploiting these resources for a long time yet. And also, Obama already removed the best areas for uranium and coal mining from the monument designation. So that claim that they're presenting is certainly there, But I'm a little bit doubtful. That's why I really think that this is an attack on tribal sovereignty. I think it's latent Mormon racism coming out in a direct attack on tribal sovereignty. Of course, they're not going to present it that way. They're gonna present it as protecting business interests and so on, but they're, you know, that's a bluff. It's a lie.

Reactions to Trump's Utah Monument Announcement

John Dehlin [01:13:55] Okay, so, Angelo, tell me what you think and feel about Trump's announcement and him coming out on Monday. How does that strike you?

Angelo Baca [01:14:07] Well, I've been saying all along, and I'll say it now, that he hasn't said anything yet. It's a monument. It's still the law. It's still gonna be native land. It always will be. It is now. It's gonna be there for generations, far beyond us, far beyond Trump. And we'll still be around. We'll still be there. It doesn't matter what government designates it into what demarcated lines on a map. It's still sacred land, still sacred territory, still ancient burial grounds. It's still indigenous land. And we're gonna be here, and we're gonna take care of it, and we're not going anywhere. And I think Mormons, the government, the state of Utah has to realize that. I don't think they've really comprehended that, is that we've been through historical trauma before and we've been through people trying to remove us before, and we're not going anywhere. And we're definitely going to stand up for ourselves and assert our tribal sovereignty and, you know, honor the memory of our ancestors and our future generations to come.

John Dehlin [01:15:22] Okay, so for you it's kind of business as usual.

Angelo Baca [01:15:26] What's changed? There's nothing that's changed. Every president since George Washington has tried to eliminate Native populations. He tried to burn down entire crops and villages with the Haudenosaunee when he first was president. All the way up to the present day, we still have all these, you know, presidents who are doing these genocidal acts. And so for us, we will continue to survive. And I think this is just going to be one more step in the chain of how we can not just survive, but thrive in the future.

John Dehlin [01:16:06] Well, okay, so that sounds like a lot of hope and resilience and strength coming from you, Angelo. Not a lot of fear or even anger. It's just like, ah, it's a bunch of privileged, you know, aristocratic white people thinking they're doing something. They're not really doing anything is that

Angelo Baca [01:16:25] we're taking the long view on it. You know, people really take themselves pretty seriously and think that they're super important. They don't understand that they're a part of everything else, that we're all interconnected, that the landscape, the plants, the animals, the spirits, the universe, they all have part and parcel, a part to play, and we're just a part of it. We're not above it, we're not masters of it. We're not going to be deluding ourselves with these delusions of grandeur. I mean, we're really pragmatic, realistic, intelligent, spiritual people. And we're going to survive this like we survived everything else. And I think it'll be fine.

John Dehlin [01:17:07] All right, well, I love that perspective. Thomas, do you want to add anything? Are you worried? Are you not worried?

Thomas Murphy [01:17:14] I'm deeply troubled. I respect. That was very eloquent, Angelo, the way that you stated it. And I deeply respect that long, long view. But at the same time, on the short scale, I'm deeply disturbed, you know, that Donald Trump has in his office, hanging in there, a portrait of Andrew Jackson. And Andrew Jackson is the most genocidal of the American presidents. And not only that, when he started removing tribes from the east, the Supreme Court declared his actions illegal. And he said, well, basically, let the Supreme Court justice enforce his own policies or his own rulings and ignored the law of the land and proceeded with the genocide anyway. And I see in Trump something similar. You know, he idolizes Andrew Jackson and has shown contempt for law. And this is another example of contempt for law and particularly contempt for those little bits of American law that help protect tribal sovereignty. There's not a lot of it, but There is some of it and it's contempt for it. And you know that that to me is deeply troubling and morally wrong. And the other thing that's deeply troubling for me is I see this moment as an incredible opportunity for Mormons. They're on a more positive note, the Book of Mormon challenges Mormons to create, together with American Indians, a Zion, to create a Zion of equality. That's modeled in the story of the great Peace in the Book of Mormon where everything was held in common and there were no ites among us. Right. That's the invitation that on a positive note, the Book of Mormon gives to settler colonists. And Mormons have missed this opportunity, or so far they have. It's not over yet. As Angelo said, the opportunity. Mormons can still change trajectory here, but here's an incredible opportunity that for Mormons to demonstrate that they're serious about rejecting racism, that they're serious about creating a Zion in which all peoples are equal. And yet we as Mormons are failing in that endeavor.

John Dehlin [01:19:56] Thomas, I'll ask you, because you sort of self identify as Mormon in one way or another, how does it feel to know the LDS Church is meeting with Donald Trump on Welfare Square? On the one hand, we believe in obeying, honoring and sustaining the law. He's the president, United States. In some ways, regardless of who's filling the office, it's, you know, it's an honor and a sign of respect to our country or just to the office of the president to host him when he comes to your state. On the other hand, some may think he doesn't represent maybe the core of Mormon values or virtues or principles in so many ways. Do you have thoughts or feelings about the church actually meeting with them on Monday?

Thomas Murphy [01:20:46] Yeah, that's a difficult question because I think that the heart and intentions of a lot of the leadership of the LDS Church and certainly of the bureaucracy and is not so much in favor of Trump. They recognize that Trump is the antithesis of Mormon and Christian values. And, you know, a man who openly admits to sexually assaulting women on a tape that regularly spews racist rhetoric in his campaign speeches and in his actions and anti Muslim, it's the antithesis of what a Christian is supposed to be. And, you know, there was speculation during the election that Utah was going to flip and go Democratic or independent for the first time in generations, and it didn't happen. And in fact, Mormons voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, especially white Mormons. And so I think the LDS Church is in a difficult position. If they did the right thing. And the right thing would be telling him to get the hell out of Utah and to resign as president. That would be the right thing to do. To say, you are a disgrace to this nation and to the Christian faith. And that would be the right thing to do. That would be the courageous, the prophetic thing for church leaders to do. But if they do that, they'll alienate the bulk of their membership.

John Dehlin [01:22:31] And they. And you know, and I just want to say of Mormon Stories, we try and be careful because I do have listeners write in and say, stop assuming we're all liberals. Stop assuming we're all Democrats. There are that. We do have a lot of listeners who are Republican, who are conservative. Some Trump supporters, some don't love Trump, but they still like what the Republican Party stands for. And so they support Trump because they support the principles of the Republican Party. I just want to say Mormon Stories tries to be neutral in its sort of editorial standpoint. And we don't want people to think that we assume everyone's liberal or, or that even being Democrat or liberal is what is the preferred true way. And having said that, I think, Thomas, I can relate to a lot of the concerns because I don't care who you are, some of the things that Donald Trump has said and done just don't stand the test of any basic moral or ethical sort of standard. So it's really tough. So we appreciate you sharing your viewpoint and we understand that not all listeners are going to agree. But thanks for sharing. I'm going to give Angela the last word because I need to wrap up this interview and I'm so grateful for it. So, Thomas, do you have any final thing you want to say before we give Angela the last word?

Closing Thoughts and Call to Action

Thomas Murphy [01:23:53] I would just thank you for letting us speak our minds, even when not all your listeners will be happy with that. I do think, and I do challenge the ex Mormon community to look internally and look at the white privilege that many of us are acting on and that we take advantage of and look reflectively on ourselves. Don't just criticize the church. Look upon ourselves and see if there is any way that we can act more morally in our behaviors. And that's the challenge I'll issue. Thanks for the chance to do this and Angelo is a great colleague and I've really appreciated the many years of work that we've done together. And so thank you, Angelo, for joining us today.

John Dehlin [01:24:39] And thanks to you, Thomas Murphy, for making this interview possible. It's always great to have you. Let's have you back. All right, Angelo, why don't you give us any final thoughts, observations, call to action, whatever you want to say. The floor is yours to sort of wrap this up, however you want to wrap it up.

Angelo Baca [01:24:59] Yeah. Thank you for inviting me, John. And thanks also to Tom for being here. I think Tom is one of those very early courageous voices that was saying what I was thinking, and I didn't know how to say it yet. So this was important for me to figure out that, you know, I didn't really want to admit it, but there were things that were bothering me about the church and about, you know, how we viewed the status quo in Utah and San Juan County. And that's not how it is. It's not how it should be. And, you know, once I've gone out in the world and I've seen what is different, what can be better, and I've come back, I can't go back. I can't unsee what I've seen and know what I know and not be disturbed by it. And so this is important for us to speak our minds. Whether or not people agree, this is still a minority voice that you have to listen to because you're only getting so much from these other sources that you listen to and access on a regular basis. But for us, you don't really get to have the privilege of listening to our elders, our spiritual leaders, our elected officials, our people who do have that great voice and that great perspective. And for me, I agree also with Tom about the ex Mormon community. I have hope and faith in you guys. I need you to have these conversations. I need you to start these conversations at home, in the coffee shop, at church, wherever we can start them. Because this is a time right now where your own families and your own future generations will look back and ask you, why didn't you say anything? Why didn't you stand up for what was right? Why didn't you stand up for your nation, your government, your community, for the indigenous peoples whose lands that we are on and benefiting from? Because that is the key moment that we're in right now. We're trying to tell people that everybody has a voice, they all have a responsibility, and now is the time to use it, especially those folks who have, like, really great ties to the church. There's a lot of access, resources, networks. There's so much that you can do, even though you might not think that it's the truth. And so that's what we need from you guys is to start talking about the truth. We need to Talk about the historical trauma, the injustices, the histories that exist, and acknowledge what the truth is and what the facts are. And that's when we can start healing. And that's what all this is about. Bears Ears is a place of healing. That's why it's a sacred landscape. It's not just for us. It's for everybody. That is the intent of why we wanted to come together, to make that place, that special place available for everyone. So this is why we need everyone to help us.

John Dehlin [01:28:14] Beautiful. Powerful. Thank you. Angelo, I want to have you back at Mormon Stories to tell your story, but also to talk about your film in layman's terms. Can you talk about that really quick?

Angelo Baca [01:28:25] Sure. It's a very basic premise. The question is, what is a Lamanite? And I'm basically sort of your host. I take you through a whole hour documentary of exploring that question. From Palmyra to Hawaii to Salt Lake. I interview a lot of people who are willing to speak on the subject, and some of them are actually, you know, very well, well known public figures who have something to say about it. And so for me, it was an exploratory documentary that helped to kind of flesh out what that means and what the critiques are, the strengths and the weaknesses of having this Lamanite identity and looking at it from historical and cultural perspective.

John Dehlin [01:29:16] All right, well, let's do a viewing of that in Salt Lake City and then have you out to tell your story. How does that sound?

Angelo Baca [01:29:22] Great.

John Dehlin [01:29:23] All right, let's make that happen. All right, angelo Baca and Dr. Thomas Murphy, you guys are awesome. Thanks for joining us. Thanks to all our listeners who joined us today and make this possible. Thanks to everyone who donates to and supports the Open Stories Foundation. Your donations and support are tax deductible, and they go towards keeping the podcasts alive, supporting our staff, and making it so that we can continue to help people tell their stories. So thanks so much, you guys. Take care. What an honor to have you on today. Take care, Angelo and. And Thomas.

Angelo Baca [01:29:57] Thank you very much, John.

John Dehlin [01:29:59] All right, everybody show out in support Saturday and Monday at the various events and protests that are going on. Speak up your voice. Vote accordingly. Are there any actions or protests that people can attend?

Angelo Baca [01:30:15] Yes. Tomorrow is the monumental rally in Salt Lake City, and there'll be lots of different people there. Thousands of people will be there. And there will also be another gathering when Trump supposedly comes on Monday. So I encourage people to come out, show up, stand in support, and stand with us. Stand for Bears Ears.

John Dehlin [01:30:38] All right, all right. Take care, everybody. Thanks so much. We'll see you guys soon. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org thank you very much.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.