Non-Native Facilitator and Participant 1

• In Event: Unforgetting Indigenous Education Histories to Cultivate Hwił Haahodinééh: Diné Experiences in the Mormon Indian Placement Program

Abstract

Participant 1 and the symposium facilitator is a non-Native white settler who was raised in the heart of Utah’s Mormon Culture Region while the Placement Program was still in existence, and therefore the history of the Placement Program is deeply and uniquely entangled with his own. He completed his dissertation on the history of the Mormon Indian Student Placement Program, having sought and secured the approval of the Navajo Nation’s Human Research Review Board to do so, and currently works as an Assistant Professor. As a scholar and as an ally, he is committed to learning, listening, and thinking in solidarity with the Diné who have shared their stories with him and which he has lent his own expertise and training to narrate for a broader audience.

Author

• M. Nathan Tanner, University of Nevada - Reno