"Navajo Latter-day Saints are DineI doIoI GaIamalii," writes Farina King, in this deeply personal collective biography. "We are DinE who decided to walk a Latter-day Saint pathway, although not always consistently or without reappraising that decision."DineI doIoI GaIamalii is a history of twentieth-century Navajos, including author Farina King and her family, who have converted and joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), becoming DineI doIoI GaIamalii-both DineI and LDS. Drawing on DineI stories from the LDS Native American Oral History Project, King illuminates the mutual entanglement of Indigenous identity and religious affiliation, showing how their DineI identity made them outsiders to the LDS Church and, conversely, how belonging to the LDS community made them outsiders to their Native community. The story that King tells shows the complex ways that DineI people engaged with church institutions in the context of settler colonial power structures. The lived experiences of DineI in church programs sometimes diverged from the intentions and expectations of those who designed them. In this empathetic and richly researched study, King explores the impacts of Navajo Latter-day Saints who seek to bridge different traditions, peoples, and communities. She sheds light on the challenges and joys they face in following both the Dinei teachings of Si' h NaaghAI Bik'eh HOzh I-"live to old age in beauty"-and the teachings of the church.
Farina King is Horizon Chair of Native American Ecology and Culture and associate professor of Native American studies, University of Oklahoma, coauthor of Returning Home: DinE Creative Works of the Intermountain Indian School, and author of The Earth Memory Compass: DinE Landscapes and Education in the Twentieth Century.
List of Images Foreword Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Dine doo Gaamalii: Navajo Latter-day Saints 2. Gaamalii Bina'nitini: Missionaries 3. Olta' Gaamalii: "Mormon School" 4. Sodizin Ba Hooghan: Church 5. Beyond Dine Bikeyah 6. Red Power at BYU 7. Dine doo Gaamalii Perspectives Epilogue Appendix: Oral History Interviews and Oral History Sources Glossary Notes
"An insightful and fascinating study into the lived experiences of Dine Latter-day Saints. It is important as the fullest examination of that history yet published."-Times and Seasons "In this beautifully rendered autoethnography, Farina King reckons honestly with the injustices of settler colonialism but refuses to grant it a controlling role. Instead, she centers the voices of her own DinE family and other DinE dOO GAamalii, Navajo Mormons, showing how they have built lives faithful both to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and to DinE identity and peoplehood all at the same time."-Tisa Wenger, professor of divinity, American studies, and religious studies at Yale University, and author of We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom "This history illuminates the complexity of relating simultaneously to DinE and Latter-day Saint worlds. Richly textured by oral histories and the history of the author's family, it attends closely to the diversity of views and practices among DinE Latter-day Saints."-Matthew W. Dougherty, author of Lost Tribes Found: Israelite Indians and Religious Nationalism in Early America
