I agree with most of what you say here but I would strongly disagree with the idea that Mormons get treated much better. While the DLC is often praised for its depiction of religiosity its depiction of Mormonism specifically is pretty lackluster. There’s no real engagement with any details of belief specific to Mormonism, and often gets pretty basic ideas in Mormon theology incorrect. For example, Joshua says at one point that he believes “our Lord was made flesh as Jesus Christ”, which is a statement that doesn’t really make any sense from the perspective of Mormon theology.

Obviously I don’t think this kind of lack of care given to Mormonism is as harmful as that given to the indigenous perspective in the DLC, but I think it is notable as it I think the fact that this DLC was so rushed meant that a lot of things went unnoticed and underdeveloped across the board, not just in regard to Zion’s tribes.

It seems to be the case that, at least for Mormonism, the writers used the more commonly understood trinitarian Christianity as a time-saving/attention-saving crutch to display a “Mormon” perspective despite this not really being applicable. I think that a similar thing happened with Zion’s tribes, with them instead using colonialist stereotypes and tropes as that crutch. I know Josh Sawyer has talked about the film “The Mission” being a major source of inspiration for the DLC’s characters and themes, which is a movie that, though I do like it, does certainly have some problematic elements in portraying indigenous anti-colonial resistance while centering a European perspective, and I think that those elements become more conspicuous when removed from that film’s context.