Item Detail
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31628
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1
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5
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English
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Miss Indian BYU Contestation over the Crown and Indian Identity
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Journal of the West
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52
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3
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1
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Santa Barbara, California
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Journal of the West
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"Portraits of American Indian women hang along a hallway on the third floor of the Ernest L. Wilkinson Student Center at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. The Miss Indian BYU photographs remain part of a past school tradition and a vestige of the Native American presence. The Miss Indian BYU Pageant began in 1967 during the Kimball Era, when Spencer W. Kimball directed Indian programs — particularly Indian Education — through the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) between the late 1950s and early 1980s. BYU alumni remember the pageant as a big event, and the winner’s 'photo [was] taken and placed on the same floor as the Homecoming Queen.' A Native American student organization called the Tribe of Many Feathers (TMF) hosted the Miss Indian BYU Pageant for twenty-three consecutive years before cancelling the pageant in 1990 following the termination of various LDS Indian programs. Native American students resurrected the pageant in 2001, crowning Vanessa Arviso (Navajo) as Miss Indian BYU 2001 2002. I [the author] won the last Miss Indian BYU Pageant in 2006, after TMF crowned a total of thirtyeight students during the tenure of the pageant. By focusing on the experiences and perspectives of past contestants, the Miss Indian BYU Pageant and its cancellations illuminate contestations over Indian identity and the waning Native American presence at a Mormon college that once boasted the largest Indian student body in any university." [Author]
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All Abraham's Children : Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage
'Great Spirit Listen' : The American Indian in Mormon Music
Mormons, Indians and Lamanites : The Indian Student Placement Program, 1947-2000
Native American Studies : A Utah Perspective
"To Become White and Delightsome" : American Indians and Mormon Identity