Unsettling Scripture: The Book of Mormon, Indigenous Authority, Anglicization, and the Origin of the Record: Antropologist Dr. Thomas Murphy investigated the Iroquois and found pre-existent sources

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Before anything else, there is a foundational issue that must be stated clearly.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints presents the Book of Mormon as an

Indigenous record translated into English. That claim is central to its authority. But if the record is Indigenous, then the authority to interpret it does not begin with the institution that published it. It remains with the living traditions whose language, structure, and knowledge systems already contain it—traditions that endured under severe conditions of displacement, suppression, and systemic attempts at erasure.

For generations, these teachings were preserved quietly and often privately, not because they lacked validity, but because the conditions in which Indigenous peoples lived made open transmission difficult or unsafe. Their survival depended on continuity through memory, community, and disciplined preservation until a time when they could be spoken more openly.

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This creates a difficult but necessary recognition: Indigenous knowledge systems were not absent. Yet interpretations and narratives derived from them gained wider authority within expanding religious frameworks, while the originating voices were not equally centered.

This is not a marginal point. It is the core contradiction.

Dr. Murphy and What Has Been Seen From Outside

This is where the work of Dr. Thomas W. Murphy becomes significant.

Murphy identified parallels between Haudenosaunee traditions and the narrative of the Book of Mormon, recognizing structural similarities that challenge the assumption of isolated origin. His work has been described as “unsettling” because it disrupts a long-held narrative of independence.

But what he has identified is limited.

It is not the full structure.

It is the tip of the iceberg.

These parallels are visible not because they were newly created, but because they already exist within Indigenous systems that have been continuously maintained. Murphy’s contribution is not that he discovered something new, but that he confirmed—within an external academic framework—that these alignments are real.

From within Indigenous traditions, this recognition is not surprising.

It is expected.

1830 and the Shift of Narrative Authority

The timing of the Book of Mormon’s publication is not incidental.

It appears in 1830, the same year the United States enacted the Indian Removal Act, initiating the forced displacement of Indigenous nations across vast regions. This period marks a critical shift in both physical territory and narrative control.

At that moment:

Indigenous peoples were being removed.

Indigenous languages were being suppressed.

Indigenous systems were being disrupted.

Yet at the same time, a text emerges claiming to represent Indigenous history and identity, without any indigenous opportunity to speak for or against, due to Federal Policies silencing any voices even to family continuity and cohesions.

Where did it present itself? In the heart of the Midewiwin Lodges and Haudenosaunee Longhouses.

This is not a neutral overlap.

It is a moment where knowledge remains, but authority over that knowledge shifts outward.

The teachings did not disappear.

But the ability to define them publicly moved away from those who carried them.

Continuity Does Not Require Recognition

From within Indigenous systems, none of this depends on external validation.

Yet when those same Indigenous voices speak—especially from within traditional authority—they are often met with dismissal, criticism, or ongoing attempts at discrediting. Most striking is that this response frequently comes from faith groups that claim their own foundational narratives are rooted in Indigenous peoples, while resisting the authority of the very traditions they invoke.

Within certain LDS doctrinal frameworks, restoration itself is described as something Indigenous peoples must receive through submission to that authority. This establishes a condition in which Indigenous identity and knowledge are treated as incomplete until validated externally by the very colonists generations who destroyed them! In doing so, it reverses the direction of origin: a system that claims to originate in Indigenous record asserts interpretive authority over those same living traditions.

The pattern is clear.

Recognition is conditional.

Authority is centralized and only held by colonizers with historical and generational abuse patterns.

Continuity is expected to defer.

But this does not erase the knowledge.

Language carries structure.

Structure carries meaning.

Meaning carries continuity.

These do not disappear because they are unrecognized by institutions, or challenged by those who assert interpretive authority through later systems such as the nineteenth-century Doctrine and Covenants and subsequent apologetic traditions.

They remain intact within the systems that preserve them.

The Question That Cannot Be Avoided

The Book of Mormon claims Indigenous origin.

That claim cannot be selectively applied.

If it is Indigenous, then no institution can claim ownership over it while also asserting the authority to define, regulate, or penalize others for interpreting what is declared to belong to Indigenous peoples. That is not interpretation.

That is reversal.

At the same time, it cannot claim Indigenous origin while separating itself from the traditions that already carry the language, structure, and meaning it reflects. It cannot assert Indigenous foundation while rejecting Indigenous authority.

The contradiction is not subtle.

The name it uses aligns with Indigenous language.

The structure it reflects aligns with Indigenous systems.

The narrative patterns it carries are already present within living traditions.

Those traditions were not lost.

They were not erased.

They were not waiting to be restored from the outside.

They remained.

They still exist.

They still teach.

They still preserve what was given to them.

And within those traditions, the original understandings are still clear.

Human difference was never defined as fixed racial hierarchy like colonizing counterparts.

It was understood through land and living conditions.

Where peoples lived under forests—under canopy—they were protected from constant sun exposure. Over generations, those conditions produced lighter skin. Where canopy was removed, where people lived exposed to open sun without the protection of forest, generations darkened naturally as adaptation to that environment.

This was not a moral judgment. It was not a curse. It was not a division of worth.

It was a natural, environmental reality tied to how people lived with or without balance in creation.

That is the original understanding and it was taught widely.

What happened later is that early LDS interpretations encountered these kinds of environmental realities discussed by indigenous leaders who were all spiritual centered as there was no understanding of separation of spiritual from social or economic issues—already known in Joseph Smith’s time—and they reframed them into a racial narrative.

Again, only after the Indian Problem was addressed by their colonial government, domestic peoples to the western hemisphere whose entire identity was also stolen and appropriated.

It is common knowledge early colonist leaders approached Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe lodges asking for them to not honor agreements with the Crown in England. This was agreed upon so long as the colonists fell under the Great Peace, took upon themselves the eagle standard, and three house government, as this was required to place their leaf on the tree of the tribal nations.

Yet even here, once victorious, and after honoring these agreements with treaties, they then acted again in their cultural norm globally: theft, replacement, and genocide by all means necessary, replacing brotherhood with greed and conquest.

To the colonist with indigenous information, it becomes skewed for their benefit,

Light became “favored.”

Dark became “fallen.”

That is not Indigenous teaching.

That is nineteenth-century racial thinking, drawn directly from the broader white cultural framework of that time.

And it did not remain casual interpretation.

It was reinforced.

It was formalized.

It was justified within doctrine.

Systems like the Doctrine and Covenants reinforced a structure where Indigenous peoples were positioned as needing to be “restored,” “corrected,” or brought into alignment under that authority—despite the claim that the record itself originates from those same peoples.

That is not preservation of an Indigenous record.

That is the imposition of a racialized interpretation onto it—and then the elevation of that interpretation into authority over the very people it came from.

And this did not happen in isolation.

It happened during removal.

It happened during suppression.

It happened while Indigenous peoples were being displaced from land and pushed out of authority over their own systems.

Yet even then, the records did not disappear.

They were carried.

They were protected.

They were preserved.

Which means the narrative does not begin where it is claimed to begin.

It did not suddenly appear.

It was already here.

And even within simplified retellings, the original structure still shows through. What is described as an “angel” aligns far more closely with an Indigenous role—a grandfather, an elder, a carrier of knowledge—not an isolated, unrelated figure detached from lineage and community, yet they always forget to state he was an indigenous grandfather, instead portraying him and the common peacemaker as white Europeans.

This was not creation.

This was encounter, reinterpretation, and reshaping.

So the question is no longer whether the connection exists.

The evidence is already present:

in language, in structure, in environmental understanding, in what remains beneath the anglicized form, and in the records that continue to exist despite everything done to remove them.

And to prove that this is not theoretical, only one fact is required:

A single Indigenous-aligned record or narrative existing prior to June 11, 1829, when the Book of Mormon title page was copyrighted, is enough to establish that the narrative did not originate at publication.

Only the title page was copyrighted—not the entire body of knowledge it represents.

That matters.

Because it shows that what was claimed was not the origin of the knowledge—but the presentation of it.

And there is more than one such record.

Dr. Thomas W. Murphy’s research already demonstrates that Indigenous narrative structures, systems, and parallels existed prior to publication. What he has identified is not exhaustive.

It is the beginning.

More exists.

More continues to surface.

Which removes the final defense.

This is no longer a matter of belief.

It is a matter of recognition.

If the record is Indigenous, then authority cannot be taken from Indigenous systems, reshaped through another language, layered with external cultural assumptions—including imposed racial frameworks—and then returned as something requiring submission to that same authority.

It cannot stand both ways.

Either the record is Indigenous—and the living traditions that preserve its language, its structure, its understanding of humanity, and its relationship to land are the primary authority—

or the claim of Indigenous origin is not being applied honestly.

There is no middle ground.

There is no position where Indigenous origin is affirmed while Indigenous authority is denied.

And if that contradiction remains—

then the issue is no longer the record.

It is who has claimed the right to redefine it.