Indian placement program: legal thriller

[2bizE]

No, this is not the title of a new John Grisham novel,but a retired program the church used to run. The idea was to take young, Native American boys and girls out of their homes and place them with non-native families during the school year. Education opportunities were recognized as poor on Indian reservations.
What could possibly go wrong? Well, a few bad apples thought it easy to use this program to rape and abuse young boys and girls. Now, after many years, some of the abused are suing the church, and appear to be winning against the law firm Kirton McKonkie. Only Pres. Monson remains as a senior leader during this time, and he may be required to bear his testimony in court.
I had a boy in my ward and elementary school class named Dennis who was part of this program. It did help many kids get a much better education. I was too young to notice the administrative parts of this program, but I do remember Dennis missing his family back home. Was the child carefully vetted first, or did they just rip them from their homes and ship them to Utah and Idaho?

http://www.sltrib.com/news/4596141-155/ ... -church-to


Here is an Ensign article about the program from many years ago.
https://www.lds.org/ensign/1971/07/lama ... h?lang=eng

[RubinHighlander]

Brings back memories of Tom Trails. These were videos we watched in the 70s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4zA4nC7WLE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjFXravrwCI

Wasn't the overall impetus behind the that placement program to fulfill prophesy to take the gospel to the Lamanites and to make them a white and delight-some people? But divine revelation (not pressure from rising DNA evidence) made it possible to remove that line from the BOM intro; so all is well...

[moksha]

The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 made this practice of taking children from their native families illegal in the United States.

[Corsair]

This case could make a tear jerker movie with the right script. I do remember meeting a, uh, "Lamanite" woman who lived with my grandparents during the late 60s. She seemed nice enough and did not appear to be particularly harmed or sad by the experience. But an experience like the Indian Placement Program does not seem like something I am in a position to judge, personally. The legal process will be fascinating no matter what happens.

[tearjerker]

I lived and worked on the Navajo reservation at a trading post from 1975-1978. The missionaries lived in a trailer less than 100 yards from our house. George P. Lee (see Wikipedia for his story) was the mission president of the Arizona Holbrook Mission at that time. He had been one of the early participants in the placement program in the mid-50’s.

The missionaries were very busy during the summer finding school kids to send on the buses up to Utah. Baptisms were done as quickly as possible, and there was rarely any family participation at those events. I’m sure some parents saw this as an opportunity for their kids to get an education, away from the many problems that the families living there faced.

Ripped from their homes and their culture, sent home for the summer, and returned again in the fall, this must have seemed somewhat surreal for these kids. Many of them still lived without running water in their homes, and their foster placements must have seemed luxurious by comparison.

The schools the kids attend these days are newer, and have the latest in technology, but many of the problems, especially alcohol and drugs, remain. Graduation rates are still well behind the rest of the country. But even if they graduate, the quality of the education they have received leaves them way behind their peers, and success on a college campus is fleeting.