Michalyn Steele: "I Know that He Loveth His Children”

Morgan Jones  0:00
As I was in the process of trying to figure out the best intro for this week's podcast, I went to church and a talk was given about our baptismal covenant and unity as children of God. In the talk, the speaker said that Jesus is the perfect example of empathy. When Lazarus died, despite knowing that it was not too late and that Lazarus would soon rise again, Jesus wept with Mary and Martha, and those who witnessed the scene said, "Oh, how he loved him." Jesus was the perfect example of mourning with those that mourn, even when we may not understand or our life experiences may cause our perspectives to differ. And that is what we will be talking about on today's episode. In our efforts to more fully take His name upon us, it is my hope that we will follow His example and seek to have empathy for all around us.
A graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center, Professor Michalyn Steele joined the BYU Law School faculty as an associate professor in 2014. After beginning her legal career with a highly regarded D.C. firm specializing in the representation of Indian tribes, Professor Steele worked for six years as a trial attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division. While at the Department of Justice, her work was honored with the division's Special Act Award in 2006, and the division's Special Achievement Award in 2007, 2008, and 2009. Beginning in late 2009, Professor Steele worked for several years as a counselor to the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, Larry Echo Hawk, at the U.S. Department of Interior. She is a member of the Seneca Nation of Indians of New York and was recently appointed to BYU's committee on race, equity and belonging.
This is All In, an LDS Living podcast where we ask the question, "What does it really mean to be all in the gospel of Jesus Christ?" I'm Morgan Jones, and I am so grateful to have Michalyn Steele with me today. Michalyn, welcome.

Michalyn Steele 2:16
Thank you. Nice to be here.

Morgan Jones 2:18
Well, I have so much appreciation for Michalyn. I feel like I should tell listeners upfront, we actually recorded this episode about two months ago, and a lot has changed in the world. So our episode quickly became somewhat outdated, because Michalyn's background is all in civil rights, and with everything happening in the world, I feel like it's important that we make sure that we're touching on the things that Michalyn knows better than most of us, and so thank you so much for being willing to do this again.

Michalyn Steele  2:56
I'm glad to have a do-over.

Morgan Jones  3:00
First of all, I want to start with—you are a Native American, and I believe the first Native American we've had on the show. And that just makes me so happy. Can you tell us a little bit about your heritage and what it has meant in your life? Then we'll kind of transition to how that heritage led to your career.

Michalyn Steele 3:23
Sure. I am a member of the Seneca Nation from western New York through my mother, and my dad's side of the family are pioneers in the great LDS tradition. But my great grandmothers joined the Church in the 1940s on the reservation. The missionaries went to the reservation in New York, called the Cattaraugus Reservation, in the 1940s, and they found really two people to join the Church at that time, and they happen to be my two great grandmothers. Eventually, my grandmother was also baptized, and my mother. That has been a tremendous inheritance. For me, their legacy of faith, not just in the Lord, but in the Book of Mormon and in the Church has been a tremendous blessing for me and to a great many members of my extended family. I'm ever so grateful that they made those choices and pointed our family in a direction where we could add to the great cultural treasures, the treasures of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Morgan Jones  4:38
So before we move on, I really am so curious about what that culture has taught you. You gave a great talk at BYU a while back, and you talked about how your cultural traditions have taught you principles and things that have impacted your life, and lessons that you've applied in different aspects of life. You specifically said, and I love this quote, "Just as the record of Lehi and his children were preserved against a time of spiritual famine, indigenous peoples and cultures hold truths that teach us in this age of political, moral, and ecological turbulence." So I wonder, how has your upbringing and your heritage influenced your life as you've grown up and become the amazing person that you are?

Michalyn Steele 5:42
Well, I think it's been in the values that those Seneca women have modeled. The Seneca tradition is a matrilineal tradition—you are a member of the tribe if your mother is a member of the tribe, and the culture is transmitted from mothers and through mothers. So I have really a tremendous sense of the strong women who have endured great things and taught true principles that have only helped me to understand the gospel more deeply. And I extrapolate from that that there are many things that are preserved as part of Native culture that are truths that the rest of society—as I said in the talk, just as the Book of Mormon was preserved, a record of Lehi and his children, against the time of spiritual famine—it's my belief that indigenous people, indigenous culture, that God has communicated and preserved in those traditions great truths that may help us to face the challenges of our day.

Morgan Jones  7:00
Yeah. Let me ask you this: you mentioned the Book of Mormon and your mom and your grandmother's beliefs in that book, and a lot has been said about the Book of Mormon as it relates to people of color. What does the Book of Mormon mean to you and to your family?

Michalyn Steele 7:23
Well, for me, the Book of Mormon is truly a testament of Jesus Christ, first and foremost, and it really does teach plain and precious truths about the gospel and the plan of happiness that the Lord has for us. I also feel like there were so many prophets in the Book of Mormon who pleaded with the Lord that the record would be preserved in part. Part of that plea was to be a blessing to the remnant of the children of Israel. I don't know exactly who that is in terms of biology, but I know that the spiritual—you know, the Book of Mormon in the title page tells us that American Indians are among the ancestors. I don't know what that means, I don't know who that means, I don't know who it doesn't mean. I leave that to others to think through. We just haven't been told that. But I take it at face value that there is, in some sense, a spiritual heritage, certainly, that has been preserved as a particular message to Native peoples, and that message is that the gospel of Jesus Christ is for us.
We sometimes think about—and I know this debate happens broadly in the Native community—whether Christianity is the religion of the conqueror, and so to un-conquer yourself, you have to put off Christianity, embrace only indigenous teachings, and reject Christianity because of the violence that has been done in its name. Part of the Book of Mormon's message to me, then, for Native people is a message of healing. When—I forget if it was Mormon or Moroni—he says, "Know ye that ye are of the house of Israel," specifically talking to the remnant that would be preserved. And to the extent that that feels like me through that inheritance, then it helps me to know that Christianity is an indigenous religion in that sense. It is that the Savior came among the people here in the Americas, He taught the gospel, and He remembers the promises that were made to those prophets who sought diligently that the remnant would be blessed by the record. To me, that feels like me. I feel blessed by the record. It helps me to understand the breadth of the Lord's love and also that He does remember all the promises that He makes and keeps them, even when it takes generations and generations.

Morgan Jones  10:43
That's beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that. I'd like to talk a little bit about how that heritage and your upbringing led to your interest in civil rights. So you have devoted your career to both practicing as a civil rights attorney, and then teaching as a professor at BYU. Is that right?

Michalyn Steele  11:11
Yeah, so I kind of have a dual-track legal career. When I was 12, we moved from the reservation, left New York, and came to Orem. We lived in Orem so that my mother could go to law school at BYU Law. She was among the early classes at BYU, and the first native woman to graduate from BYU Law. So I think that has always given me a tremendous interest in what we call "Federal Indian Law," the law of the United States that deals with tribes and that was my mother's career. She's retired now, but her career was practicing law in Idaho and Nevada and that region to be able to help serve tribes. She was a judge, a tribal judge, and she was an advocate for tribes and had a tremendous legal career with her BYU Law education. That said, I did not intend to go to law school. My plan was to do humanities and maybe teach in humanities. I remember, when I was about 12, someone asking me what I wanted to do, and I think I said, "I want to teach at BYU." I didn't even know what that would involve, but I only remembered that a few years ago, when suddenly I was teaching at BYU. I came there not through a path that I had envisioned.

I think I have always had a tremendous interest, since I was a little kid, in the history of the American civil rights movement, I was always interested in any kind of books or movies that would teach me about that. So when I decided to go to law school, my intent was to practice Indian law, and I did that when I first graduated from law school. I worked at a firm in Washington, D.C., where all of our clients were tribes, including my own tribe. I got to assist them, and that was really special for me. I had the opportunity when I was thinking about what was next, to go to the Department of Justice to the Civil Rights Division, and that felt like a dream coming true for me. It took my legal career in the other stage of where I hoped to go. When I was in law school, I took all the classes I could that had to do with civil rights, and I just had a passion for it. So I worked in the Department of Justice, in the section of the Civil Rights Division. Our primary responsibility was to enforce the federal Fair Housing Act and several other civil rights acts on behalf of the federal government. I did that for six years and really loved every minute of it and enjoyed working to help bring about greater justice and vindicating the civil rights of my fellow Americans in that way.

Morgan Jones  14:27
Yeah, it's amazing. I love that your mom was an attorney, I didn't know that. That's so cool. That's kind of neat what you were saying earlier about how your tribe is all through the mother's line, and you've now followed your mom in that career. That's really neat. So one thing I think that everyone has realized over the past few weeks, Michalyn, is that civil rights work, having an interest in being involved in civil rights can be kind of emotionally exhausting. I know I have felt that as we've tried to address that through LDS Living and through this podcast, so for you, how do you stay motivated in that fight?

Michalyn Steele 15:18
Well, I think, in part, it feels exhausting because it is exhausting. When I teach civil rights, in the law school course that I teach, we have an opportunity to revisit the cases that have helped to move our country in a direction of greater realization of our ideals and aspirations, to give the Equal Protection Clause greater meaning, and to win legislation that makes for a more equitable and just society. And that work was done very much, the sacrifice of it was very much by the African American community, by Black people, so I think of how exhausting it must be to have generations. I think of people like Charles Hamilton Houston, and Thurgood Marshall, who led the legal fight that led, ultimately, to Brown v. Board of Education, and the idea that "separate but equal" was not in keeping with the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. I think about the price that was paid by so many individuals to try to win equal voting rights or equal housing rights, equal access to education. Those fights are not finished.
I think about the people, someone like Charles Hamilton Houston, who was Thurgood Marshall's law school professor and dean, who kind of taught a generation of lawyers to be able to lead this fight. He died before Brown v. Board of Education was decided, and literally gave his life to these kinds of issues to make life better, yes for African Americans and for the Black community, but certainly to make life better for all of us. All of us benefit from a more just society, and so, I think for those of us who are doing the work of thinking about these issues and allowing the pain of discrimination and racism, allowing ourselves to join in that pain, yes, it's exhausting, but I think it is but a small taste of what generations of African American people, families, martyrs to the cause, laborers for the cause who have insisted on the equal dignity of all of God's children, and tried to help our country to repent for the things that we have done that have failed to live up to that truth. I think of their exhaustion and the generations that it has taken to see the fruits of those labors, and the "one step forward and two steps back."
I think about someone like Bryan Stevenson, who is the head of the Equal Justice Initiative, and his work with unjust convictions, and trying to improve the justice system. I think if Bryan Stevenson can stay optimistic with all that he has seen if he can choose hope, if Martin Luther King could choose hope, if Thurgood Marshall could choose hope for the system, and they could cope with that exhaustion, then I can cope with the exhaustion and follow their example. I draw from the strength of those leaders who have sacrificed their all, many of whom are ordinary Americans whose names we don't know who participated in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, whose homes were bombed for insisting on voting rights, and who just do the work of insisting that their lives matter and that their participation in our democracy matter. They have done that work day after day, generation after generation, and the rest of us can kind of buck up and join the fight, even if it comes at some individual cost.

Morgan Jones  20:01
Yeah, I completely agree with you. That's one thing that, as I've tried to talk and listen to friends' experiences, I've realized that the reason that everything feels kind of loud right now is because, for so long, it felt like no one was listening. And so now, when when it feels like people are actually listening, you're gonna speak up, and you're gonna be a little bit louder than you have been. I love that you said, these people chose hope. Because really, the fact that people are speaking up right now is because they still have hope that there can be change. I think that that is so important. The thing that I've tried to realize and I've felt that is like, "Okay, so you didn't sleep well one night because you were worried about this stuff. Well, there's a lot of people who have not slept well for a very, very long time." And so I think it's so important for us to invest in that, and even if it does, like you said, come at an expense, it's an emotional expense worth making.

Michalyn Steele  21:20
Morgan, it is an expense that we have covenanted to bear, that we would mourn with those who mourn, not just hear about their pain and feel sorry about it, but do the work of mourning with those who mourn. We've covenanted to bear their burdens, so I think it's tremendous if we can fulfill that covenant more fully, and see and hear and sit with the pain, especially of the Black community at this time, that we are seeing and hearing afresh, but they are not experiencing afresh. It's the same thing, and they're tired, and it is tiring. So for us to be able to sit with that pain, not ask them to make us more comfortable in it, not ask them to just continue to do the work of bearing it mostly on their own, but truly to link arms and to shoulder the burdens in whatever way they ask us to, I think is sacred work, and it is work that the Lord would have us do as part of our covenant with the Lord for our brothers and sisters. He wants us to be one. He wants us to not just feel empathy, but to do the things that will bring some relief for those burdens.
In his letter from Birmingham Jail, Dr. King taught us a really important truth. He said, "I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be." He called that the "inescapable network of mutuality," he said that "we are tied in a single garment of destiny." In summarizing his position from the jail, Dr. King said that as we work to fulfill this network of mutuality, as we join together, all we're doing is recognizing the bond that is there, that we're tied in this single garment of destiny. When we work to make the world more just for one another, he said we become "co-workers with God" in that endeavor, that that is God's work and that, when we join it, we become His co-workers. And I love that idea. It's what I try to help my law students to understand, that a legal education gives you tools and empowers you to do good if you will use them to that end.
The director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which was the position that Charles Hamilton Houston had and Thurgood Marshall, that position is today occupied by a woman named Sherrilyn Ifill. And I heard her say recently, that people ask her, "What do I do? I've got this knot in my stomach that won't go away about the things that I'm seeing happening." And she said, "I've had a knot in my stomach since I was 21, and I have been learning these things, I don't know how to make it go away." So I think it's important that we sit with this pain and bear it, help lift it, and not ask people to be quiet because it's uncomfortable, or ask people to move on to the next news story because it's uncomfortable. We really do have to join together as co-workers with the civil rights community that has been doing this work for generations, and as co-workers with God. And I know your podcast goes all over the world, but I think particularly in the United States, as people who believe in the ideals of the Constitution and want to see them realized, we just absolutely have not given enough credit to the African American community, to Black people, for helping us to realize the promises and potential of the Constitution in respecting the equal dignity under law and the equal dignity of all of God's children.

Morgan Jones  26:07
So well said, thank you so much. Let me ask you this, Michalyn. We've talked about how this requires getting uncomfortable, and I think that that's so important to touch on and emphasize, actually. But I wondered for you, I think one thing that I've been really grateful for over the past few weeks is that, in that uncomfortable feeling, there's also a lot of joy to be had. And I think it's pure joy, right? It's not like the kind of like fleeting happiness that we sometimes talk about, but the kind of joy that comes from knowing and recognizing that we're all children of God. How have you felt that joy in this work?

Michalyn Steele 26:53
So I met a woman as part of a BYU civil rights study trip. We went to many significant sites in civil rights history, and we met a woman who had been part of the children's marches. She was in Birmingham at the time with Dr. King and the other leaders of the movement there. She was marching as a young woman, getting arrested, spending time in jail, being assaulted. Her name is Myrna Jackson. She spoke to our group and talked to us about her experiences, and she left a lasting impression on me because I asked her, "How do you keep going?" She's still working even though she's now one of our sacred elders in this work. I asked her, "What motivates you to keep going day after day in fights that are difficult, if not impossible, to see real and lasting change?" She said, "I wake up every morning and I say, 'Lord use me today.' And He does." And that was very inspiring for me to think about, and I think of her often, her example. I consider it a success the days when I feel that the Lord has used me in some way, and often that is hopefully to lift an individual. Sometimes it's doing things that are of more consequence, it doesn't matter if you are a co-worker with God, if you are doing those things that the Lord would have you do, to use your gifts in service to his children. And I think it's a great motto: "Lord, use me today." And whatever that might be, He knows your gifts, He knows the people that you will come across and interact with, He knows your sphere, and He can multiply that sphere, multiply your gifts and use them to your blessing if you offer them to Him as Myrna Jackson does.

Morgan Jones  29:10
Thank you so much. I wonder for you, Michalyn, if you could maybe offer any ideas on how Latter-day Saints right now can best support and encourage these conversations and the battle for civil rights in our neighborhoods and communities.

Michalyn Steele 29:31
We're a divided society right now, and I think there tends to be a retreat into an idea of "us vs. them." And I think, as Latter-day Saints, who is the "us" when we think about "us vs. them"? And that we don't divide, but we embrace and we don't have a versus, we have a with. I think if we stand with our brothers and sisters—I'm not even talking about politics in any way, I'm talking about human dignity, and seeing the pain, it doesn't mean we all have to agree on a policy solution—but not rejecting the pain because it's uncomfortable or because you think somehow it's the "other team," whatever the other team is. Not "other-izing," but embracing, I think is really important. Being willing to listen, being willing to recognize that people of color don't just struggle in civic society, they sometimes struggle in the Church as well. They have to do the work of educating the rest of us, or insisting on their own dignity and value, when the rest of us should be welcoming those gifts and recognizing them and making sure that just as all are like unto God, that all are like unto us and that we love as God does, without limitation, and that we love in real ways—not just in theory, but in real ways.

Morgan Jones  31:21
And I wonder, too, we've talked about on this podcast, I love that you mentioned, in our churches, and in our wards, we need to embrace everyone for what they bring. So I'd be curious if you have any specific suggestions in terms of how we can do that. Because I think it's like, "oh, yeah, I want to do that, but what does that look like?"

Michalyn Steele  31:46
Mm hmm. It's a good question. What does that look like? I think it looks like love and acceptance on the theoretical level. What does it look like on the day-to-day level? It means loving each individual as an individual, embracing everyone for their experiences, meeting everyone where they are. It means not transferring the work of both bettering or our church family and bettering our civic family, it means not outsourcing that constantly. That labor, emotional and physical and all that. Not outsourcing it to our Black brothers and sisters or to other communities of color, but it's everyone's work. It's everyone's opportunity to serve. And I think allowing everyone to be where they are as an individual. It means checking our own biases and expectations and making sure that we're the ones doing the work of that, and not transferring that work on to people of color.

Morgan Jones  33:06
Yeah, I think those are two really wonderful examples, because I was thinking earlier, when you were talking, about one of the biggest lessons that I feel like I'm learning right now, which is how unfair it is to think that everyone within a certain race are the same, and how we have to think of people as individuals, and get to know them, and put a face to their experiences, and actually sit down with them. That has made a huge difference for me as I've tried to understand what's going on in the world right now, and I've been super grateful to those who have shared their experience.

Michalyn Steele 33:52
Yeah, I think listening with love is always a good first step. Being willing to be uncomfortable, to sit with people's pain, whether that is based on their experiences with race or in any way, to be able to just sit with their pain and share it, mourn with them, bear their burdens and try to make them light. Understanding that tremendous work has already been done, and sometimes we can join it. We don't need to reinvent the kinds of things that people of color have been working toward. That's why, for me, there are people who are doing civil rights work that I can support who have much more experience and much more perspective, and supporting their mission rather than launching off on my own, when I would be retreading work that they have done for generations.

Morgan Jones  34:58
Absolutely. I love that. Let me ask you this before we get to our final question: how would you say that your testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ inspires the work that you do?

Michalyn Steele 35:11
There's a scripture in the Book of Mormon where Nephi, he's being asked if he understands the meaning of the tree or the river, or something like that in the vision, and he says—I'm paraphrasing—"I don't know the meaning of all things, but I know the Lord loves his children." And that's me. I don't know the meaning of all things. There's a lot of things I don't understand. But I do know the Lord loves his children, each of us, and that part of my purpose in life I think it's everyone's purpose really, is to learn to do the same: to love and serve His children. Love as He does, unconditionally. Love as He does those who would harm us, blessing those who curse us, and even the Savior taught us to love those who would despitefully use us. He puts no limits on that commandment, to love. To love Him with all our heart, might mind and strength, and to love His children, I think in the same way. As ourselves, he says. That is a tremendous doctrine that I understand. It's what I think animates my approach to civil rights. It's what animates my approach to federal Indian law. It is love. I certainly have growth to still be made, but I know the Lord loves his children. I want to love them too, and to me, that means trying to do my best to help the country to do better; to help my community to do better; to, first and foremost, make sure I do better; to check the ways that I may have contributed to people's pain, or been indifferent or cold to their pain; to try to more fervently mourn with those who mourn and to bear their burdens.

Morgan Jones  37:18
Thank you so much. My last question for you, Michalyn, is, what does it mean to you to be all in the gospel of Jesus Christ?

Michalyn Steele  37:27
When I think about this question, there's a scripture that comes to mind from the Book of Mormon in the book of Omni, where a prophet named Amaleki was summarizing. It sounds like he just had a little tiny space to fill on the plates that he was finishing before he passed them on, and that he was going to deliver them. And he says, in Omni 1:26, "I would think ye should come unto Christ, who is the Holy One of Israel, and partake of His salvation, and the power of his redemption. Yea, come on to him, and offer your whole souls as an offering unto him." And I thought about that phrase, what does it mean to offer our whole souls? So I think being all in the Gospel of Jesus Christ means you make your whole soul an offering to him. You make whatever talents and gifts and energies and opportunities He has blessed you with an offering. You dedicate them to Him. You consecrate them to Him and His work, and to his children, to the blessing of others. The idea that Myrna Jackson said, "Lord, use me today." We are meager instruments. We are imperfect instruments. But as we seek to use our hearts, our mights, our minds, and our strength in His service, then we're all in. We leave nothing behind. We withhold nothing from the Lord of our gifts, our energies, and He will use them for blessing his children.

Morgan Jones  39:17
That's so beautiful. And it actually reminds me, I'm working on a print article right now about Keoni Kauwe, who's headed down to be the president of BYU-Hawaii, so I was interviewing President John Tanner, who's the outgoing president. He talked about becoming holy, and how, as we seek to become holy, we become whole. And so giving your whole heart, there seems to be some correlation there between giving our whole heart, becoming holy, and then being whole in return. So I love that thought. Thank you so much, Michalyn, for sharing your experience, your knowledge, the things that you've worked so hard to better understand. And as we all are trying to be better and do better, I can't thank you enough for your time.

Michalyn Steele  40:10
Thanks for the opportunity, Morgan.

Morgan Jones  40:13
A huge thank you, once again to Michalyn Steele for her willingness to join us and re-record this week's episode. I hope that it helped you all as much as it helped me. We're also so grateful to Derek Campbell of Mix at 6 Studios for his help with this episode, and we are so grateful to you. Thank you so much for spending time with us each and every week, and we will look forward to being with you again next week. Until then, please stay safe and stay healthy.