NEW MEXICO
The Freethinker
Spencer W Kimball, pictured above, was a Mormon “prophet” who masterminded a programme that placed thousands of young Native Americans in the homes of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints between 1947 and 2000.
The Indian Student Placement Programme that drew in some 40,000 children stemmed from the Mormon belief that America’s indigenous people had fled from Israel in the year 600 BCE and had split up into two groups: the Nephites, a righteous and civilised people; and the Lamanites, an “idle, savage and bloodthirsty” people who, after hardening their hearts, were cursed by God with a “skin of blackness” and thus became “loathsome.”
Kimball, raised in southeastern Arizona, was called as an apostle – or one of the top leaders – of the Mormon Church in 1943. Then-president George Albert Smith gave Kimball a special assignment to:
Watch after the Indians in all the world.
Kimball served as the 12th President of the Church from 1973 until his death in 1985.
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