Supporting Truth-Telling
For Native American Heritage Month a dear friend recently reached out to me to express support. During the many years I have been witting about the Lamanite label and experience there were moments that I struggled with the weight of the topic. My friend was completely unaware of those moments, yet during them he would send a kind note and had no idea about what a difference he made. This time when he reached out he also shared some of his own experiences that he had in learning and remembering Indigenous history. As he shared his recent experiences with me we talked about him writing a guest blog post and he enthusiastically agreed. Thank you Kevin Rex for your kindness, friendship and support. And thank you for sharing some of your own story here.
The Old Lime Kiln
by Kevin Rex
On October 6, 2023, my mom passed away at the hospital in Richfield, Utah. About a mile north from the hospital are the relics of a lime kiln used by Mormon pioneer settlers. It was once used during the early years of when they were building brick and mortar houses and buildings, beginning in early 1864. I don’t know much about the process of extracting lime for mortar cement from the rocks and earth of the area, but I know it requires high heat, and hence the kiln that is dug into the red-rock hillside north of town, on the “other” side of the I-70 freeway. After the memorial and burial services, and after everyone else had gone, I returned on October 17th to be with my dad, share our grieving together, and perhaps keep him from too much loneliness. My dad was very familiar with the old lime kiln, as he has lived in Richfield, Utah, since early 1977, and he’d heard that there was an old jail building moved to the kiln area as well as additional preservation efforts, including interpretive history information and plaques. So, he and I drove from one end of town to the other to see and read the history. We both enjoy learning about history; we’re the types that stop all along the highway to read “those” history markers.
At the trailhead to the old lime kiln, there was a lot of history to take in, but no history of the Indigenous people who had occupied this Sevier Valley, with its long, meandering high-altitude river stream, a stream that gave life to the Indigenous people. The only mention of the Indigenous people was to laud the Mormon men who had served in various military positions in the wars to rid the area of the “American Indians”, the Utah Black Hawk War, and other battles. A memorial board with much pioneer history and information about the old lime kiln, had been erected as an Eagle Scout project (in 2006), and that information ended with this:
“The pioneers who sacrificed so much to gather in Zion did so with a sure knowledge that they were ‘about their Father’s business’. This is a promised land, and those who pioneered our valleys did so with an eye looking forward to our day. To their descendants, who one day would share in their dreams, may we all work together to help others realize the great blessing that our organization can provide for them.” (Please see link #1 below).
I cried upon reading that, realizing that even after all these many scores of years since the massacres and genocide and cultural destruction of the Indigenous people of this so-called promised land, the history is still being wrongly told, one-sided at best, and erasing so much of entire First Nations. And religion is still playing its “manifest destiny” role in it all. Though the quote does not mention the Mormon church specifically, and “our organization” likely refers to the Sons of the Utah Pioneers who helped fund the memorial park by the old lime kiln, my tears were coming from my grief as I had left Mormonism, the religion of my youth, my grief as I remembered my mom and how much she loved reading non-fiction history, including so much about Indigenous culture, and about the awfulness of polygamy in early Mormonism, and about the history of that ghost town, Widtsoe, where she and dad chose their burial sites, and my grief knowing that not even a land acknowledgment would ever be voiced for the many tribes of Indigenous people who made the Sevier River valley their home. The “promised land” concept of this land (The United State of America and the American continents) is foundational to the Book of Mormon. It is simply an extension of white colonialism, simple yet awful.
My new religious community, the Unitarian Universalists, consistently and with deep and honest concern, not only reads at Sunday services a land acknowledgement for and to the Tualatin Kalapuya (Atfalati) who lived on the unceded land where our old Presbyterian church building stands in Hillsboro, Oregon, but this active and woke community of mine now tries to learn all it can about Indigenous people; we also try to do things in support of them and other marginalized groups. That is pure religion and undefiled before the Great Spirit.
Interstate 70, I-70 for short, came through Richfield and then cut through the Tushar mountains south and west of Richfield. It was under construction while I was a teenager going to high school in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. As the construction crews dug into the hillsides at the beginning of the road over the Tushar’s, near Clear Creek Canyon, they discovered a significant archaeological site of the Fremont Indians. Our neighbors, a husband and wife team who both had studied archaeology at Mormon-owned BYU, helped excavate the artifacts there at that site where a state museum is now located. They helped discover that the Fremont Indians had cultivated various legumes, especially a version of the Anasazi bean. An ancient stash of the beans provided enough seed that some local farmers further south in the warmer climates of Hurricane and St. George, Utah, cultivated and then began marketing them. My mom was thrilled to try these new beans in the 1990’s, and she claimed that they were much better tasting than the Pinto beans we had become accustomed to as kids. I tried a batch of these “refried” Fremont beans she made one time when me and my kids were visiting in Richfield, and I concur with her; they had a lot more flavor, a mix of black bean and Navy bean flavor. Their color was mixed, like a Pinto horse, black and white spots. (Please see link #2 below).
I-70 was also part of the route we all took driving down to the ghost town where we laid to rest the body of my mom. I drove with two of my granddaughters to the burial service, and as we drove, I pointed out to them a small Indian Reservation that is south of Richfield, and west of the little town of Joseph, Utah. My granddaughters are young, and I explained as best I could about the massacres and fights over the land. It is a small village of homes built by the Bureau of Indian Affairs from the 1970’s, and the location amongst the dry sage and rabbit brush looks austere, almost unlivable. It is ironic, the old lime kiln north of town and the Indian Reservation south of town. Where and when do they ever converge? (Please see link #3 below).
At my mom’s grave, I recited silently my own land acknowledgment, a prayer I had written when we were all together in Richfield celebrating my parents’ 60th anniversary just a few years prior. I did not give this prayer to any of my family at that time or at the graveside service; I’m known as a “woke” rebel who is doomed to lesser kingdoms in the eternal realms of Mormon heaven because I’m gay, and I am pretty sure such a land acknowledgment prayer would not have been well received then or at the graveside, either.
“We gather today on the lands of the ancients, and we remember them by name, the Ute, the Paiute, especially the Koosharem Band of the Paiute, so near to us now and beloved of the Fish Lake area, and also the Goshute, and the very ancient cultures of the Fremont and The Anasazi. We acknowledge that these people gave birth to children, and lived, and died here, and had cultural traditions, spiritual traditions, and happiness and sadness like all humans do. May our families be blessed to know of their history and may we be woke with that knowledge. May we take whatever curse has fallen on us through generations of disbelief about their traditions, and may such new knowledge now entice us to make it a blessing for the future. May the spirits of these ancient tribes and their natural ways help us to heal the Mother Earth which we know you, dear Mother and Father, created for all of us, for to live in peace and harmony. May we paint with all the colors of these strong winds and sing with all the voices of these firm mountains. In this great circle of life created by the union of two souls to make a family 60 years ago today, may we also remember the two-spirit people who were raised up and honored by the traditions of these ancient tribes and may we now include such two-spirit people within our circles of friendship, giving them equality, also. May we seek to bring about the justice and liberty for all, including the many people of color throughout this great land. As now we have many people of color within our own family circle, in the traditions of the Ichma, Toltec, and Otomis, and the Taino, let these ancient spirits fill us with motivation to give life the shape of justice, that our family may grow with great knowledge to help form the more perfect union we all seek. In the name of all that is good. Amen.”
There has been a sort-of public relations campaign by the Mormon church in recent years, to distance itself from the unproven historical aspects, the anachronisms, and the racial writings in the Book of Mormon, to play-down the white colonialism and “manifest destiny” teachings. Yet it is still in lesson manuals and scripture, and in the hearts of the people of the Mormon people, as evidenced by the memorial writings at the old lime kiln. And there are no legume beans mentioned in the Book of Mormon, even though many other non-indigenous cultivated foods are mentioned and claimed as factual history. I hope that the spirit of my mom is exploring the truths that come from the indigenous spirits with whom she mingles now at the ghost town cemetery. It is a beautiful mountain foothill area, full of ponderosa pine and juniper trees. I hope.
Link #1
IMG_4505.jpg (550×413) (dyeclan.com)
The paragraph quoted is the last writing shown in this photograph, bottom right of the memorial board.
Link #2
Link #3
Our Lands | Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah (pitu.gov) The small village is on the land given to the Koosharem Band of the Paiute Tribe.
This essay is dedicated to my mother, Esther Knighton Rex (born March 15, 1942, died as noted above on October 6, 2023), who taught me to love reading non-fiction, to love humanity’s many stories, and to love poetry. In 1974, after finishing reading all four volumes of Carl Sandburg’s biography, “Abraham Lincoln, The War Years,” given to her as a gift by her nephew, Jose, who was working at a bookstore in Salt Lake City, Utah, she read the then-recently translated “Gulag Archipelago,” by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, also a gift from her nephew, paperback copy, though. Seeing her read such voluminous works, thick books laying on her nightstand carefully marked for the next evening’s reading, I was inspired to begin studying more history myself, and that has led me to a lifetime of curiosity in politics, geography, current world affairs, and ultimately, to a study of theodicy which led me to join the Unitarian Universalists. She was reading “Far From the Tree” by Robin Benway when I came out of the closet gay in 2013, and she told me the book helped her begin to understand that it wasn’t her fault I was gay, though that was her first and immediate reaction. She then read everything I sent her about what it is to be gay and Mormon, and one last time as a mother, she mustered up enough emotional energy to become as strong an ally to me as she could and still remain Mormon. In her last two years of life, as her physical strength, eyesight, and mental acuity deteriorated, she would often rest and watch old episodes of “The Waltons”, a TV drama produced in 1970’s about a depression-era family, as the stories reminded her of the economically poor, yet lively and lovingly rich childhood she had had; however, to mark distinctly the lower status of television as compared to reading, and to give comedic relief and acknowledge her own elderly status not being able to read anymore, she would leave the room with her iPad saying aloud, “I’m going to lie down and watch “The Walnuts.”
Lamanite Truth 