A Heartlanders Response to the Salt Lake Tribune

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This is the best book that explains, "What is a Heartlander" Purchase at bookofmormonevidence.org/bookstore

Below is the referenced SL Tribune article and my response. I feel it is important to share my point of view, as I was mentioned in the article.

Who are the Heartlanders and why do they insist the Book of Mormon took place in U.S.?

By Tamarra Kemsley SL Tribune Sunday March 27, 2022 Conference Edition

This is an article written by the above Tamarra Kemsley that was in the Conference section of the SL Tribune on March 27, 2022.

While you can read and make your own conclusion about this article as I have, and make up your own mind on how you feel. My purpose on this blog it to simply respond to part of the article that spoke about me personally.

I will begin under the articles headline title of:

Why the Heartlanders are gaining traction now

In about the 6th paragraph into this above heading the article begins by bringing a lady named Hanna into the story.

Before I quote Hanna Seariac, who mentions me in the article of Tamarra’s, I would like to explain how I first met Hanna Seariac.

How I met Hanna Seriac

My dear friend and fellow Heartlander Hannah Stoddard actually introduced me to her and another graduating BYU student and friend of Hanna, named Tristen Mourier. (Notice in this post Hanna Seariac’s first name is “Hanna”, without the “H” and my friend Hannah Stoddard is spelled “Hannah”, with the “H” as first names). It is not confusing to me so in this article for you to understand better I will be spelling their names correctly with the simple “H” added to the Stoddard name or subtracted for the Seariac name.

I have been the event coordinator for Rod Meldrum’s FIRM Foundation Expo’s and Conferences for the past 15 or so conferences. They are held semi-annually usually here in Utah from Provo to Layton and quite often in St. George and out of state in the past as the  virus issues have kept Rod more locally.

Hannah Stoddard gave me the names of Tristen and Hanna to be potential speakers at our conference that was scheduled in Sept 2021 as a video conference because of the virus, and not as a live event at a local convention center. I spoke with both Hanna and Tristen and after speaking with them, I was happy to have them both speak at our conference. Hannah had told me they were both in a group at BYU which was a gathering of students that had some different issues with some of the BYU professors and I was interested to have them speak about those differences. I left it up to them on what to speak on. Tristen chose a topic called “Michael and the Dragon – Win the War Raged Waged Against our Youth”, which I thought would be great to help the youth of the Church.

Hanna Seariac chose the topic of, “What is Critical Race Theory”, which I also thought was a great topic to help the youth. As a matter of fact I was strongly against the critical race theory and I didn’t like it in our schools. To me it was a very devise and even a racist concept saying as I understood it, the White race is at fault in life just for being White and Blacks are constant victims of the White society. That is too simplified as a definition, but I didn’t agree with its concept. Because of this I was happy to have a recent BYU student give her perspective about this theory so we could see both sides.

Currently on our bookofmormonevidence.org/streaming subscription site, are both of these talks from Hanna and Tristen that we recorded for our Sept 2021 conference that we have our Heartlanders and anyone else view who has a subscription.

Who Am I

For the sake of understanding, when I say I am a heartlander, or I say someone is a heartlander, I am simply describing a group of mostly very active members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who just happen to believe the final battles of Hill Cumorah happened in New York and not in Mexico somewhere as most of those Mesoamericanists believe. Both groups are allowed to have their own opinions and both groups are good active LDS members. The Churches official opinion of where the events happened is of course neutral and stated officially here in the Gospel Topic Essay’s.

I personally am not neutral in my position, as I feel the Book of Mormon events happened in North America and I like the Wayne May and Rod Meldrum ideas. I believed the Mesoamerican theory from the time of my mission to Fiji 1975 until about 10 years ago, after hearing Rod Meldrum speak and then studying out things and praying about these theories, the Heartland Theory made the most sense to me after almost 40 years thinking the Central America ideas were correct, mostly because the light blue Book of Mormon I used mightily in Fiji and Kiribati and Vanuatu had pictures of Mexico and Central America in them, so i figured the Church was saying events of the Book of Mormon happened in Mexico and I believed what I saw in this blue BofM and that is why I believed in Mesoamerica. After many years I came to my own conclusion that events occurred starting in North America. I also however knew that through marriage and intermingling at the end at Cumorah in 385 AD, most likely the remaining Lamanites and some Nephites who had joined the Lamanites, were still roaming this North American land and probably moved into Canada and Mexico as well, but it all began I believe near the panhandle of Florida where i believe Lehi landed as Wayne May has said.

With my amazing and fruitful mission, I have learned to really love people of all races. I believe the Polynesians and Melanesians and Micronesians definitely have the blood of Israel and thus Lehi’s blood running through their veins. I have also grown up all my life loving baseball as my favorite three players were Willie Mays, Willie McCovey and Juan Marichal of the San Francisco Giants. I never noticed skin color and these three were my hero’s, along with Rod Carew and Harmon Killebrew of the Minnesota Twins.

What is a Heartlander

Some uneducated people insist a Heartlander like me is an anti-vaxxer, and White supremist and believes in a flat earth. Well the Heartlanders I know don’t believe any of that. Sure we will get some ignorant person in any camp who is outside that norm, but I don’t know many at all. I mention this so you understand the out of context quote from Hanna Seariac or Tamarra Kemsley don’t apply to me. Hanna doesn’t even know me very well. I have had vaccines all my life including Polio, Chicken Pox etc. I even had my first ever flu shot about 2019 and after having it and getting a very bad flu, I promised myself I would never take another flu shot again.

When this current virus came up I had to make up my own mind. I saw the government pushing hard for me to take this shot, it was advertised by hospitals and doctors and the consensus in the world was this shot must be safe. I even saw my beloved Prophet take a shot. That is when I got serious about my decision on what to do. I have been taught all my life to not just follow the popular opinion , but to search for my personal answers. I studied and prayed and after seeing many of the ingredients in this shot and by seeing some unreported things happening that  the main stream media didn’t report, and considering all my options I decided to net get THIS shot for personal reasons. My sister, brother, in-laws, and many others received the shot as they decided it was good for them and that is wonderful. We all should have freedom to chose and to this day I have chosen to not take the shot as I strongly feel it is not good for me. You can choose for yourself.

I have explained briefly some information about me, before I discuss the article written by the SL Tribune referenced above, so you can understand who I am. I love the Lord Jesus Christ with all my heart and the same goes for the Prophet Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon and all the Apostles today with a deep love and respect for our Prophet Russell M. Nelson.

I invite you to our 29th BofM Conference. I have obtained over 30 copies of the SL Tribune Newspaper dated March 27, 2022 that I am happy to give at my cost only to anyone who asks. To the Heartlanders it is proof that as long as others talk about us, good or bad, it will help them be interested in looking into our love of the Savior. Just as the Broadway Play of the BofM is a terrible representation of the real gospel, it does bring many referrals to the Church of people interested in the Church.  Tickets Here:     Schedule of Speakers Here:


Hanna Seariac

Back to my being mentioned in a SL Tribune article. As I mentioned earlier, Hanna recorded a video for our Book of Mormon Evidence Conference in Sept 2021. The following is on our current website as her short biography.

“Hanna Seariac is a MA student focusing on early Christianity who works as a research assistant for religious scholarship and a research assistant on the BYU New Testament commentary series. She hosts the FairMormon podcast called “FAIR Voice”, runs an organization to combat pornography and sexual assault called “Han & Chan”, and writes religious and political articles.”

As the event organizer I was very happy to see that Hanna was going to speak for us about Critical Race Theory. Especially as it would be good to hear from a non-heartlander associated with FairMormon. I have invited many good people from different beliefs and backgrounds to speak, including members of the Church and non-members and Restorationist LDS members. Truth comes in all forms and I desire to hear from anyone who shares any truth. It is ultimately up to me to decide who speaks the truth based on my study and prayer so why would I ever be afraid to listen to dissenting opinions. I wouldn’t.

Quote from SL Tribune

Hanna Seariac, a master’s student at church-owned Brigham Young University studying ancient languages, has been tracking the Heartlander community online for a year. In just six months, she watched one social media account associated with the movement jump by 2,000 members.

Offline support also appears to be gaining ground, according to Brant Gardner, a Book of Mormon scholar who has written numerous books in defense of the Mesoamerican model.

“I see it frequently in wards and talking to people,” Gardner, who lives in New Mexico, said. “It’s a lot more prominent than it was.”

Exactly how popular the Heartland model has become is hard to say. As a reference, May points to the crowds he is able to draw when speaking at private events, estimating anywhere from 4,000 to 6,000 might attend the lectures over three days.

“There are a lot of Saints out there that are very, very interested in what we’re doing,” May said, “and they’re paying close attention.”

To this, Gardner grudgingly agreed.

“We can’t get that many people to any of our conferences,” he said, referring to his own community of supporters of the Mesoamerican model. “It’s a point of envy.”

“They tend to be anti-vaxxers and to post about QAnon,” Seariac said, “and are just prone to conspiratorial thinking.”

(Courtesy of Hanna Seariac) Hanna Seariac, a master’s student at Brigham Young University studying ancient languages, says many Heartlanders "tend to be anti-vaxxers and to post about QAnon, and are just prone to conspiratorial thinking.”

(Courtesy of Hanna Seariac) Hanna Seariac, a master’s student at Brigham Young University studying ancient languages, says many Heartlanders “tend to be anti-vaxxers and to post about QAnon, and are just prone to conspiratorial thinking.”

Heartlanders also tend to be anti-immigration, Seariac and Gardner said. In fact, both agreed that, more than any other belief or concern, this appears to be the driving force behind the current surge in support for the theory — that is, a sense among backers that not only their country but also their sacred text must be reclaimed from foreigners, specifically Latinos.

The way Heartlanders see it, if the Book of Mormon took place in the United States and not, as many Latter-day Saint scholars including Gardner argue, in Central America, then the Native Americans — not Central Americans — are the descendants of the Lamanites.

Seariac and Gardner explained that while this argument may seem nitpicky to outsiders, it has real-world consequences.

“It has allowed a very jingoistic, very racist approach to the Book of Mormon,” Gardner said. “And there are a lot of people that resonates with.”

A March 2021 post shared on the website BookofMormonEvidence.org, maintained by the prominent Heartlander theorist Rod Meldrum, blogger Rian Nelson used this understanding to argue against permitting the swell of immigrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“If they were chosen by the Lord to come to America,” he wrote, “the Lord would allow them here without a lot of legal hankering.”

Complete Hanna Seriac quote. SL Trib 3-27-22

“A March 2021 post shared on the website BookofMormonEvidence.org, maintained by the prominent Heartlander theorist Rod Meldrum, blogger Rian Nelson used this understanding to argue against permitting the swell of immigrants arriving at the U.S.- Mexico border. “If they were chosen by the Lord to come to America,” he wrote, “the Lord would allow them here without a lot of legal hankering.”

My entire quote in context

“Question from a Customer!

Does the border immigration crisis have possible connections to the gathering of the Lamanites so they can participate in the construction of the NEW JERUSALEM?

Prepaid Preacher?

An LDS man on you tube called the prepaid preacher, quoted these following scriptures, claiming that maybe these illegal immigrants crossing the southern border today into our country are the house of Jacob as lions (Illegal Immigrants) going into the midst of sheep (Current Americans)

16 Then shall ye, who are a remnant of the house of Jacob, go forth among them; and ye shall be in the midst of them who shall be many; and ye shall be among them as a lion among the beasts of the forest, and as a young lion among the flocks of sheep, who, if he goeth through both treadeth down and teareth in pieces, and none can deliver.

22 And behold, this people will I establish in this land, unto the fulfilling of the covenant which I made with your father Jacob; and it shall be a New Jerusalem. And the powers of heaven shall be in the midst of this people; yea, even I will be in the midst of you. 3 Nephi 20:16,22

First of all the illegal immigrants coming from our southern border are mostly Asian and if they were chosen by the Lord to come to America, the Lord would allow them here without a lot of legal hankering.

We already have a very orderly way to bring immigrants legally into the USA but the system is broken and overwhelmed. The Lord works in an organized way not in chaos. We already allow over 1 million legal immigrants each year, how many should we allow illegally before we will be overrun? Besides, as Rod Meldrum explains below, those in Central and Mesoamerica are not the people spoken of in the Book of Mormon, these illegal immigrants just received some of the blood of Lehi from actual Nephites much later in about 900 AD.” Rian Nelson

Answer to Pre-Paid Preacher by Rod Meldrum:

“If our research on the geography of the Book of Mormon is correct then the vast majority of the remnant Lamanites are the North American Indians, not the Maya, Inca, or other populations of Central or South America who genetically are Asian, not Semitic or Hebrew

We know that the ancient people’s of North America had Middle-eastern genetic ancestry.

We know that the Asiatic Mayan civilization suffered the ‘Great Collapse’ around 800-900 AD leaving their cities abandoned and new findings indicate they came north into the Mississippi river valley. Indications are that they subjugated the remnant Lamanites, forcing them into slave labor to build their massive earth mounds (Cahokia, Etowah, Ocmulgee and other massive mound complexes) and after 300 years the Lamanites overthrew them and the Maya descendants returned to their original lands around 1100-1200 AD. There was considerable intermixing between the two peoples over that 300 years, resulting in some Lamanite genetic ancestry being brought back into Central and South America and giving them claim to having Lamanite ancestry.

However, the New Jerusalem location in the Heartland of America (USA) was never the ancestral home of the Maya. Neither was this the case for any other Central American ancient civilization.

The Heartland of America was anciently occupied first by the Adena (Jaredite) culture, and then the Hopewell (Nephite) culture. The descendants of the later Hopewell culture are the North American Indians of the Algonquin language groups, which consists of some 110 tribes primarily located in the Northeastern United States and Southeastern Canada. There are a few of those tribes that migrated west, such as the Sioux, Cheyenne and Blackfoot.

So, in order for the people now crossing the border illegally to be some type of fulfillment of the prophecies regarding the   building of the New Jerusalem…

First, wouldn’t they need to be primarily Lamanites?

Second, how can they be returning to their ancestral lands when the Heartland of America was never their lands anciently?

Therefore, as I see it, the crisis going on at the border has little or nothing to do with Lamanites coming to reclaim ancestral lands they never occupied in order to begin construction of the New Jerusalem.

I hope this makes sense in the brevity in which I’ve attempted to explain a complex issue that really deserves more time.

If you’d like to delve further into this subject may I suggest getting a copy of my DVD, The Hinterland Hypothesis, which I released a couple of years ago that goes into detail about what happened in North America after the end of the Book of Mormon’s Nephite civilization. I think you’d find it fascinating.” Rod Meldrum March 22, 2021

Source Article Below

Are Lamanites at our Southern Border?

USA is the Promised Land

I want to share some quotes who express my feelings better than I can. I love this quote by Elder Hinckley. “I should like to say a few words about America…No land is without its beauty, no people without their virtues, and I hope that you who come from elsewhere will pardon my saying a few words concerning my own native land, America…surely this is a good land, a choice land, a chosen land. To me it is a miracle, a creation of the Almighty.” Gordon B. Hinckley Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled”, BYU Speeches of the Year, October 29, 1974, pp. 267-68 ) 
Bishop Orson F. Whitney also said, “…in culmination of the grand scheme of schemes, this great nation, the Republic of the United States, might be established upon this land as an asylum for the oppressed; a resting place, it might be said, for the Ark of the covenant, where the temple of our God might be built; where the plan of salvation might be introduced and practiced in freedom, and not a dog would wag his tongue in opposition to the purposes of the Almighty. We believe that this was His object in creating the Republic of the United States; the only land where his work could be commenced or the feet of his people find rest. No other land had such liberal institutions, had adopted so broad a platform upon which all men might stand. We give glory to those patriots for the noble work they did; but we give the first glory to God, our Father and their Father, who inspired them. We take them by the hand as brothers. We believe they did nobly their work, even as we would fain do ours, faithfully and well, that we might not be recreant in the eyes of God, for failing to perform the mission to which He has appointed us.” Bishop Orson F. Whitney, delivered in the Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Sunday Afternoon, April 19, 1885. Reported by John Irvine. Journal Discourses Volume 26  Page 201
Also here is our then Prophet Thomas S. Monson who said, “The Lord gave a divine promise to the ancient inhabitants of this favored country (the United States): ‘Behold, this is a choice land, and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall be free from bondage, and from captivity, and from all other nations under heaven, if they will but serve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ” (Ether 2:12). “Our Heavenly Father inspired the leaders of…the United States of America, that they might together, under His direction, having been raised up by God for the purpose, establish the Constitution of this country and…Bill of Rights, that by the year of our Lord 1805 [there would be] a climate where our Heavenly Father could send into  this period of mortality a choice spirit who would be known as Joseph Smith, Jr.” Monson, Thomas S., Teachings of Thomas S. Monson, 2011, pp. 14-15, 157-158
One more quote from then Elder Russell M Nelson. “The Book of Mormon reveals that Joseph, the son of Jacob who was once sold into Egypt, foresaw the Prophet Joseph Smith and his day (see 2 Ne. 3:6–21) and noted that there would be many similarities in their lives. Centuries later, the Prophet Joseph stated, “I feel like Joseph in Egypt.” (The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, ed. Dean C. Jessee, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1984, p. 409; spelling modernized.) The Book of Mormon reveals that the inheritance of Joseph, son of Israel, was not forgotten when, as promised in the Abrahamic covenant, land was distributed to the tribes of Israel. Joseph’s inheritance was to be a land choice above all others. (See Ether 13:2, 8.) It was choice not because of beauty or wealth of natural resources, but choice because it was chosen. It was to be the repository of sacred writing on plates of gold from which the Book of Mormon would one day come, choice because it would eventually host world headquarters of the restored church of Jesus Christ in the latter days.” A TREASURED TESTAMENT By Elder Russell M. Nelson Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles JULY 1993 Adapted from an address given 25 June 1992 at a seminar for new mission presidents, Missionary Training Center, Provo, Utah.
Whether you believe the beginning of Lehi’s landing and Book of Mormon events happened in Mesoamerica, North America, or anywhere else, we should respect each other and allow others to have their own beliefs. We hopefully all love the Lord and His Church.