SPENCER W. KIMBALL - THE NATIVES ON THE LAND

In Alberta where I hail from, we are surrounded by these natives on almost all sides.  It is no coincidence, this thing.  The work has faltered among them and it will require great vision of the teacher and the teachee for it to take hold and prosper.

Here is a great quote:

W. Kimball stated: "Millions of you have blood relatively unmixed with Gentiles. Columbus called you 'Indians,' thinking he had reached the East Indies. ... The Lord calls you 'Lamanites,' a name which has a pleasant ring, for many of the grandest people ever to live upon the earth were so called. In a limited sense, the name signifies the descendants of Laman and Lemuel, sons of your first American parent, Lehi; but you undoubtedly possess also the blood of the other sons, Sam, Nephi, and Jacob. And you likely have some Jewish blood from Mulek, son of Zedekiah, king of Judah (Hel. 6:10). ... You came from Jerusalem in its days of tribulation. You are of royal blood, a loved people of the Lord. In your veins flows the blood of prophets and statesmen".[6] Similarly, at a 1971 Lamanite Youth Conference, Kimball stated: "With pride I tell those who come to my office that a Lamanite is a descendant of one Lehi who left Jerusalem six hundred years before Christ and with his family crossed the mighty deep and landed in America. And Lehi and his family became the ancestors of all of the Indian and Mestizo tribes in North and South and Central America and in the islands of the sea".[7] Ted E. Brewerton, a general authority of the LDS Church, stated in 1995: "Many migratory groups came to the Americas, but none was as important as the three mentioned in the Book of Mormon. The blood of these people flows in the veins of the Blackfoot and the Blood Indians of Alberta, Canada; in the Navajo and the Apache of the American Southwest; the Inca of western South America; the Aztec of Mexico; the Maya of Guatemala; and in other native American groups in the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific islands".[8]