"By examining how the ideals of faith met lived reality, Hendrix-Komoto offers fruitful ground for reflection and a solid, path-breaking base for future scholarship."-Jessica Lauren Nelson, <i>Mormon Studies Review</i> "<i>Imperial Zions</i> is an admirable and ambitious project."-Carleigh Beriont, <i>Montana: The Magazine of Western History</i> "[<i>Imperial Zions</i>] breaks new ground in centering Indian and Hawaiian perspectives in the interconnected stories of Mormonism, the American West, and evolving discourses of the American family."-Tona Hangen, <i>Western Historical Quarterly</i> "[<i>Imperial Zions</i>] should command a readership within and beyond Mormon historians. Historians of nineteenth-century race, religion, and sexuality will all find this to be an important book that helps us center Latter-day Saint missionary efforts in the history of American settler colonialism."-Emily Conroy-Krutz, <i>Journal of Mormon History</i> "Hendrix-Komoto has written a book that takes belief and practice seriously, and not just for those in power. She shows how those on the margins of society used belief to advocate for themselves and to maintain their long-standing cultural identities."-Nathaniel Wiewora, <i>Reading Religion</i> "With <i>Imperial Zions</i>, Amanda Hendrix-Komoto adds to a burgeoning scholarship that locates Latter-day Saints as very much a part of the history of empire-building in the American West and across the Pacific world."-Tisa Wenger, <i>Pacific Historical Review</i> "<i>Imperial Zions</i> is an important contribution to ongoing efforts to center Native cultures, stories, experiences, and perspectives as we seek to further understand the complexities of early Latter-day Saint history and culture."-Sam Mitchell, <i>Dawning of a Brighter Day</i> “<i>Imperial Zions</i> is a signal contribution to the history of the Latter-day Saints. Amanda Hendrix-Komoto brings modern scholarly concepts of empire and colonialism to bear in a thoughtful, insightful way. Her intertwined analyses of Native American and Pacific Islander Latter-day Saints represent a crucial advance in the field.”-Quincy D. Newell, author of <i>Your Sister in the Gospel: The Life of Jane Manning James, a Nineteenth-Century Black Mormon</i>
Imperial Zions explores the importance of the body in Latter-day Saint theology with the faith’s attempts to spread its gospel as a “civilizing” force in the American West and the Pacific. By highlighting the intertwining of Latter-day Saint theology and American ideas about race, sexuality, and the nature of colonialism, Imperial Zions argues that Latter-day Saints created their understandings of polygamy at the same time they tried to change the domestic practices of Native Americans and other Indigenous peoples. Amanda Hendrix-Komoto tracks the work of missionaries as they moved through different imperial spaces to analyze the experiences of the American Indians and Native Hawaiians who became a part of white Latter-day Saint families. Imperial Zions is a foundational contribution that places Latter-day Saint discourses about race and peoplehood in the context of its ideas about sexuality, gender, and the family.
Acknowledgments
Note on Terminology
Introduction
1. The Race and Sex of God
2. The Bonds between Sisters
3. Redeeming the Lamanites in Native America and the Pacific
4. Creating Polygamous Domesticities
5. Making Native Kin
6. Native Zions
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index