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In his article "Toward a Tribal Critical Race Theory in Education," Professor Bryan Brayboy posits that our stories are our theories.1 I feel most comfortable in story. As both a Mormon and a Tongan, I have used stories to educate and edify.
I learned how to read (in English and Tongan) through family scripture study. I remember blowing the palangi first grade teacher away when I used "abomination" and "iniquity" to describe my day. Stories have been the way I've understood the world and this experience of life-stories of Jesus, of Nephites, of Lamanites, of Tonga, of migration, of assimilation, of Salome.
Let me provide some context for the stories I'm about to tell.
Tonga boasts the highest percentage of Mormons of any nation, nearly 60 percent.2
There are approximately 57,000 Tongans in the US, and Utah is home to one in four Tongans.
There are approximately only 200,000 Tongans worldwide, 100,000 in Tonga and 100,000 in the diaspora.
So let us begin here. With these statistics, it may be safe to say that the majority of Tongans in America either are, have been, or are related to Mormons.
The LDS faith was a great impetus for many Tongan families to immigrate to the States, but so was the promise of education and economic stability.
The first wave of Tongans who came in the '50s were largely Mormon pioneers, and those who followed were tied to those who came first. My paternal grandparents arrived in Hawaii in the late '60s, my mother came in the late '70s, and after my parents married they arrived in Utah in the late '80s just in time for me to be born in the Salt Lake Valley.
To be honest, I don't know much about my ancestry before Mormonism. Those stories have been largely silenced or erased. The beginning was always conversion: baptism-rebirth. The rest of history are names to be recorded in genealogy books to be taken to the temple and saved there.
As I trace the lines of my Mormon lineage, it is a line of women that have brought me to this very place.
My paternal grandmother Salome joined the Church after her faith in Mormon missionaries' healing power saved her from polio. Against the wishes...