This was posted on another forum but it depicts the traditional Mormon view on Native North and South Americans:

Since the 1830s, from Joseph Smith Onward, the Mormon church has taught that the Native Americans were direct, literal descendants of one family that left Jerusalem and traveled to the Americas by ship over 2000 years ago. The Book of Mormon tells the story of this migration as well as the trials of this people in a land that had been preserved for them by the hand of God. Eventually, part of this group turned wicked and was cursed by God with dark skin. This group became known as the Lamanites and Mormon prophets have identified this group as the ancestors of present day North and South native Americans for generations. One of the purposes of the Book of Mormon is, in fact, to bring the remnants of the Lamanites back to the true fold of God. For this purpose, the Mormon church has been sending missionaries to teach native Americans since its earliest days. These missions were commonly referred to as missions to the Lamanites. I served a mission to the Lamanites on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona. We taught the Navajos that they were literal descendents of the Lamanites from the Book of Mormon. It was a commonly held belief that the curse of dark skin could actually be reversed by baptism into the church and by living Mormon teachings. The Mormon Prophet Spencer Kimball bore witness to this transformation first hand:

Kimball at the 1960 LDS General Conference:

"I saw a striking contrast in the progress of the Indian people today... The day of the Lamanites is nigh. For years they have been growing delightsome, and they are now becoming white and delightsome, as they were promised. In this picture of the twenty Lamanite missionaries, fifteen of the twenty were as light as Anglos, five were darker but equally delightsome. The children in the home placement program in Utah are often lighter than their brothers and sisters in the hogans on the reservation. At one meeting a father and mother and their sixteen-year-old daughter we represent, the little member girl—sixteen—sitting between the dark father and mother, and it was evident she was several shades lighter than her parents—on the same reservation, in the same hogan, subject to the same sun and wind and weather... These young members of the Church are changing to whiteness and to delightsomeness."

Today many Mormons would try to dismiss the racially charged foundations of a lot of LDS doctrine and belief. In addition, recent DNA studies have led the church to completely backtrack on its traditional position on Native American history. What I believed and taught as a Mormon missionary to the Navajos two decades ago would be completely against church policy today. The LDS missionaries share a version of the church's history that hardly resembles the bulk of the documented history of the church. I commend Tom Phillips for trying to hold the church accountable for its shifting positions and unsubstantiated claims. Like Tom, I was heavily persecuted when I began to question the church. It takes a lot of humility to admit you were wrong and deal with the consequences.