Hey there! I’m Marlo from Myths & Mischief. We have a topic today for you that I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone talk about. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, also known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, has its origins in upstate New York in the year 1830. Since then, it’s had an… eventful history, and a unique connection to the region of Polynesia in the Pacific Ocean – as in where New Zealand, Tahiti, and Hawai’i are. I’m going to share some of that history with you.
Now, on terminology: for the sake of my wrists and fingers, I will be using the term “Mormon” as an adjective to refer to the church and a noun to refer to its members. I’ll use “LDS Church” to refer to the organization itself. Also, I will be honest about what I find in my research, and will not seek to sugarcoat the LDS Church’s racist history. But keep in mind that the LDS Church itself will be a source for some of the info you’ll read, since it was the only source I could for some of my research. Also – and this is important – I’ll be discussing historical views and teachings of the LDS Church. These are not necessarily reflective of the views of any living Mormon person or of the church as it stands today.
Some background. The first person who was considered a Mormon missionary was Samuel H. Smith, the younger brother of the church’s founder, Joseph Smith. He sold a copy of the Book of Mormon, a book Joseph wrote and claimed was prophecy, to Phineas Young in 1830. Phineas passed it on to others in his family, including his younger brother, Brigham Young. But this is not about the church itself; we’re here to discuss Polynesia.
The term “Polynesia” means “many islands”, and it holds up well. More than 1,000 islands lie scattered across the Pacific Ocean, from those of Hawai’i in the north to New Zealand, also known as Aotearoa, in the south. The islands are almost all volcanic in origin. The larger ones have steep peaks, fertile soils, and the occasional lava flow or eruption. The small ones are atolls, thin rings of sand surrounding shallow lagoons. The native peoples of these islands share linguistic and cultural origins in Southeast Asia, and their ancestors sailed thousands of miles across the Pacific over the course of several centuries, starting about 2,800 years ago. They navigated the waters using traditional techniques involving stars, ocean currents, cloud patterns, the flight paths of birds, and more. They introduced coconuts, candle-nut trees, yams, pigs, chickens, dogs, rats, and more to the Pacific islands. They share mythological figures, dances, and other cultural practices. In the 1800s, there were numerous small monarchies on many of the islands. Some of them saw the arrival of European colonizers who wished to convert them to Christianity and/or use their islands for resource extraction.
By the 1850s, Mormon missionaries were being sent to Hawai’i and the “South Pacific” region – no specific details on what that means. They were not the only White missionaries visiting at the time. And all Mormon missionaries were White people, almost always men.
The LDS Church at the time had some very clear views on race, which it attempted to justify with religious doctrine. Starting with Joseph Smith, church leaders taught that dark skin was God’s curse. Smith also taught that humans exist before birth as a “spirit body”. After he died in 1844, church leaders taught that if one is unrighteous during this “premortal existence”, one will be punished with dark skin. These are – in my opinion – justifications for racism, plain and simple. The church officially disavowed these beliefs in 2013.
One of the Book of Mormon’s central claims is the presence of fictional, pre-colonization societies in the Americas – societies descended from Hebrews of the Biblical Era. The two main groups described are the Nephites and Lamanites, who war with each other for centuries. Around 55 BCE, a Nephite ship-builder named Hagoth sailed from the Americas to Polynesia, had children, and gave rise to the Pacific Islanders. None of this is backed up by historical or genetic evidence, but that hasn’t stopped Mormon scholars for coming up with explanations for the racial appearance of the native peoples of the Pacific islands. Oh, and due to their appearance, certain Pacific islanders weren’t allowed to be ordained to the priesthood until 1955.
In 1855, the Book of Mormon was translated into the Hawaiian language, or ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi. Māori came in 1889. The Sāmoan edition came in 1903. and Tahitian in 1904. In 1919, these “islands of the sea”, as Mormon scholars have thought of them, would see the first Mormon temple outside the continental United States. The Laie Hawaii Temple was established during the presidency of Heber J. Grant. It is considered the 5th temple. By this point, there was a large number of Mormon converts in Polynesia.
The Tongan, or lea faka-Tonga, translation came in 1946. Next was the Hamilton New Zealand Temple, dedicated in 1958. In 1965, the Rarotongan or Cook Islands Māori translation of the Book of Mormon was published. In 1980, the Fijian or Vosa vaka-Viti version came out – followed by the Niuean translation in 1981. The Apia Samoa, Nuku’alofa Tonga, and Papeete Tahiti temples were all dedicated in 1983, during the presidency of Gordon B. Hinckley. The Kona Hawaii Temple opened in 2000. Although not technically in Polynesia, the Suva Fiji Temple opened in the same year. Also technically outside of Polynesia is the Yigo Guam Temple, opened in 2022. The Auckland New Zealand Temple was opened in 2025, dedicated by Patrick Kearon.
Conclusion:
All this talk about whose skin is what color is unsurprising to see in American history. What makes the LDS Church unique is that its leaders could literally come up with religious explanations to justify their racism. They had this new, malleable, uniquely American religion – including both the good and the very, very bad parts of American law, culture, and society.
The LDS Church had a keen interest in these islands due to stories in their scripture. They, alongside other colonizers, sent missionaries. See, the LDS Church sought to distance itself from the United States in its early years. But its members acted a lot like other Americans: curious, bold colonizers who cared little about the actual people they were colonizing, and who were deeply, deeply incorrect about the world around them.
No means of colonization has a good excuse, not even if that excuse it religious. The peoples of Polynesia are not Nephites, or Lamanites, or descendants of any Biblical people groups. The Book of Mormon is, in fact, completely wrong about the history of the world. Polynesians are a subset of the wider Austronesian peoples. They are – albeit very distantly – related to the Malagasy of Madagascar, the Chamorro of Guam, the Malay peoples, the Javanese of Indonesia, and the Tagalog of the Philippines. They are a seafaring group of peoples. They are a tapa-weaving, kava-drinking, canoe-sailing group of peoples. They are ocean people.
References:
https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/history-of-missionary-work-in-the-church
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30880554
Mauss, Armand L. (2003). All Abraham’s Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage. University of Illinois Press.
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