The Indian Placement Program (IPP) or Indian Student Placement Program (ISPP), also called the Lamanite Placement Program, was operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) in the United States, officially operating from 1954 and virtually closed by 1996. It had its peak during the 1960s and 1970s. Native American students who were baptized members of the LDS Church were placed in foster homes of LDS members during the school year. They attended majority-white public schools, rather than the Indian boarding schools or local schools on the reservations.
The program was developed according to LDS theology, whereby conversion and assimilation to Mormonism could help Native Americans, who had been classified as Lamanites in terms of theology in the Book of Mormon. An estimated 50,000 Native American children went through the program. The foster placement was intended to help develop leadership among Native Americans and assimilate them into majority-American culture. The cost of care was borne by the foster parents, and financially stable families were selected by the church. Most of these placements took place on the Navajo Nation, with a peak participation of 5,000 students in 1972. The program decreased in size after the 1970s, due to criticism, changing mores among Native Americans, and restriction of the program to high school students as schools improved on reservations. Many of the students and families praised the program; others criticized it and the LDS Church for weakening the Native Americans' ties to their own cultures.
In the spring of 2015, four plaintiffs (now referred to as the "Doe Defendants") filed suit in the Window Rock District of the Navajo Nation Tribal Court, alleging they had been sexually abused for years while in the foster program, roughly from the years 1965 to 1983, and the LDS Church did not adequately protect them. The church filed suit in federal district court in Salt Lake City, alleging that the Tribal Court did not have jurisdiction and seeking an injunction "to stay the proceedings from moving forward under tribal jurisdiction." Federal district court judge Robert Shelby denied the church's motion to dismiss and also ruled that it first had to "exhaust all remedies" in Tribal Court. This is considered a major victory for tribal jurisprudence.
History
Precursors
During the earliest days of the LDS Church in Utah, Mormons often raised Native American children in their homes. Leader Brigham Young advocated buying children held by Native Americans and Mexican traders as slaves (a legal practice in the Utah Territory prior to the American Civil War), freeing them from slavery, and encouraged Latter-day Saints to educate and acculturate the children as if they were their own.
LDS theology suggests that the Native Americans have a special status. It held that Native Americans had two distinct phenotypes: "Nephites, light-skinned, 'righteous and civilized people;' and Lamanites, 'idle, savage and bloodthirsty,' for which they were 'cursed by God' with dark skin."
The Indian Student Placement Program (ISPP) of the late 20th century developed from an informal placement in 1947 in Richfield, Utah, by the LDS Church. A 16-year-old Navajo teenager, Helen John, asked permission to stay in the city to go to school. As a result, Golden Buchanan and Miles Jensen organized an informal placement program under the direction of Spencer W. Kimball, who was the chairman of the church's Committee on Indian Relationships. With her parents' permission, Helen was allowed to stay with the Buchanan family, whom she knew in Richfield. This arrangement was not an official program, but it was the basis for the Indian Placement Program that would later be established. The Buchanans agreed to take in other children as well, and that year three students were placed into the unofficial program. These arrangements continued, and by 1954 there were some 68 Native American students (mostly from the Navajo Nation) placed into foster homes in four different western states.
The ISPP worked to instill Western notions of industry through the imposition of an ethno-religious identity. The Lamanite identity defined Indians as culturally and spiritually apostate Israelites destined for latter-day restoration through an internalized Protestant work ethic. Although some rejected this theological identity others found it a point of strength and empowerment as they attended schools and participated in specific ISPP efforts to develop Western leadership patterns among Native American participants.