Relations between Britain and the Pacific kingdom of Hawaii didn’t get off to a great start. On 14 February 1779 the global explorer James Cook was clubbed and stabbed to death at Hawaii’s Kealakekua Bay in a dispute over a boat: it was a tragedy of cultural misunderstanding that still has anthropologists arguing over its meaning. Cook had previously visited Hawaii and apparently been identified as the god Lono, but didn’t know this. Marshall Sahlins argued that Cook was killed because by coming twice he transgressed the Lono myth, while another anthropologist, Gananath Obeyesekere, attacked him for imposing colonialist assumptions of “native” irrationality on the Hawaiians.

It’s a fascinating, contentious debate. But the aftermath of Cook’s death is less well known – and the British Museum’s telling of it, in collaboration with indigenous Hawaii curators, community leaders and artists, reveals a surprisingly complex if doomed encounter between different cultures.

Cook isn’t mentioned in the wall texts or portrayed in the show, but his ghost is everywhere in the objects he and his men brought back to Britain. And what marvels they are. Before Cook’s voyages the peoples of the Pacific, connected with each other by epic canoe crossings that linked the Polynesians from Hawaii and Easter Island to Tahiti and New Zealand, created cultural forms that we now call art. Giant pink feathered faces of gods with mother-of-pearl eyes grimace and gurn while a club embedded with tiger shark teeth combines beauty and menace. Bowls carried by naked figures on their backs embody how Hawaiian chiefs and monarchs were feasted and respected.

Monarchy is at the heart of this show, a common language shared by the otherwise chalk and cheese Hawaiians and Britons. After the death of Cook, which was heartily regretted on both sides, Hawaii learned, as it were, to speak British and assert its equality with a “modern” state. It worked, for a while. In 1810 King Kamehameha I sent a magnificent, feathered cloak to George III, with a yellow diamond pattern on red – on loan here from the Royal Collection which still owns it. The king apologised that he was too far away to support Britain in the Napoleonic Wars but expressed friendship – and could Britain help if Hawaii was attacked by France? The Hawaiian cloak is wittily juxtaposed here with a glittering jewelled costume worn by George IV at his coronation: idiosyncratic customs existed on both sides of the world.

Forget Cook, the show suggests: remember King Liholiho. In 1824 he and his Queen Kamamulu set out on a journey that reversed all those British “discoveries”. They set sail for Britain laden with gifts, hitching a lift on a whaling ship (the story would be even better if they’d gone by outrigger canoe). George IV seems to have been touched by the greetings from across two oceans because he received the Hawaiians in 1824 with diplomatic honours. They were seen in the royal box at the theatre and portrayed by artists. Typically cartoonists were less generous – Cruikshank portrays the depraved George IV with his arms around a tattooed Polynesian. They also visited the British Museum where they could not have missed three of its most stunning exhibits, the feathered faces of gods brought back by Cook’s team from Hawaii which are known to have been on display at that time.

The Hawaiian treasures retrieved from the British Museum’s stores are remarkable – they should have a permanent gallery to themselves. You can’t stereotype them: the fierce gaze of a martial-looking god with a chunky wooden body seems modernist, which is no coincidence because Pacific sculptures helped inspire modernism. I mistook one of the feathered godheads with its almost caricatural eye for a contemporary artwork. It was collected by Cook.

These wonders are not reliquaries of a dead culture. There’s a perfectly preserved 18th-century dance rattle, or ‘uli’uli, brought back from Cook’s third voyage, a gourd from which purple, red and white feathers sprout and radiate. A video shows Hawaiian dancers using a modern recreation of the same instrument. To Hawaiians the artistic masterpieces their ancestors made are bearers of memory, instruments of identity.

This exhibition is a celebration of Hawaii and a defence of museums with global collections. The almost miraculous preservation of delicate, fragile artworks made with feathers, teeth, wood and bark for almost 250 years is surely to the British Museum’s credit, as is this way of seeing them as embodiments of living culture.

How does the story end? The king and queen of Hawaii gave their lives for cultural diplomacy: they both died of measles in London in 1824. George IV honoured them by sending their bodies home on a Royal Navy ship. Hawaii successfully persuaded Britain and Europe it was a nation state, with a monarchical government they could do business with – so Britain kept its greedy hands off this one place. In the end it would be the US that seized Hawaii, colonised it and eventually made it the 50th state. The objects here are weapons in a continuing cultural resistance. Look out for that shark-toothed club, Mr President.

BURLEY, Idaho — For the first time since becoming President of the Church in October 2025, President Dallin H. Oaks dedicated a house of the Lord.

Dedicated on Sunday, Jan. 11, the Burley Idaho Temple is the seventh Latter-day Saint temple in Idaho. It is also the 212th operating temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the first house of the Lord dedicated in 2026.

This house of the Lord is also close to President Oaks’ heart.

He said that before President Russell M. Nelson’s death, the former President of the Church had given his counselors the opportunity to choose a temple to dedicate.

“I looked over a long list and immediately asked that I be assigned to dedicate this Burley Idaho Temple,” he said.

As a boy, President Oaks lived in Twin Falls for about five years. It was there that his father was on the high council for over four years before he died and where President Oaks attended the 1st and 2nd grades.

“So, I chose Burley to revisit my roots in this part of Southern Idaho,” he said.

Accompanying President Oaks at the dedication was his wife, Sister Kristen Oaks, as well as three General Authority Seventies: Elder Steven R. Bangerter, executive director of the Temple Department, with his wife, Sister Susan Bangerter; Elder José A. Teixeira, president of the United States Central Area, and his wife, Sister Filomena Teixeira; and Elder K. Brett Nattress, with his wife, Sister Shawna Nattress.

“This place has so much significance to him as a young boy,” Sister Oaks said. “He felt like he was drawn back here above all other places in the world.”

Said President Oaks, “I didn’t see any place that was more attractive to me than this community because I associate it with my youth.”

‘Centered on the Savior and Redeemer’

President Oaks said temples are essential to Heavenly Father’s plan for His children.

“In these houses of the Lord, we are taught the most important things we can learn and do in mortality,” he said. “The work of temples is centered on our Savior and Redeemer, Jesus Christ.”

All learned and done in temples relates to Jesus Christ, the Prophet said.

“Here in His house, we make sacred covenants with and in the name of Jesus Christ, which among other meanings signify His authority and His work,” he said. “All who worship here receive the blessings of His power and participate in His saving work. These blessings and this saving work, which we call ‘temple work,’ are supremely important for all of God’s children, those still living in mortality and those in the spirit world.”

Sister Oaks said she feels a change in her life as she worships in the temple.

“I have felt how precious time is and that you have choices on how to use it,” she said. “I go there for comfort, instruction, revelation. And it makes me a better wife, a better mother.”

Eternal families

This temple dedication comes after the death of President Nelson in September and the more recent death of President Jeffrey R. Holland, both of whom President Oaks worked with closely in the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

The death of loved ones is nothing new to President Oaks. His father died when he was just seven years old and his first wife, June Dixon, died from cancer in 1998.

“One of the great blessings we have in the restored gospel of Jesus Christ is to look at mortality as a small slice of our identity and eternal progress,” he said. “We are pained when we lose the association … and there is an adjustment to be made in trying to go on with your life without their association. But basically death is a graduation to be celebrated as part of the purpose of life on earth.”

President Oaks has promised that time in the temple will bless families eternally.

In his most recent general conference address in October, he taught that the doctrine of the Church centers on the family.

“Essential to our doctrine on the family is the temple,” he said in October. “The ordinances received there enable us to return as eternal families to the presence of our Heavenly Father.”

In that same message, he shared how his own mother taught him about eternal families after his father died.

He said she taught that “we would always be a family because of their temple marriage. Our father was just away temporarily because the Lord had called him to a different work.”

‘An outpouring of spiritual blessings’

Many in the Burley area live here because of ancestors who overcame great hardship to settle this land. And just like early Latter-day Saint pioneers who were blessed despite opposition, Latter-day Saints today can receive an outpouring of spiritual blessings through their temple covenants.

“The scriptures speak of perilous times when men’s hearts will fail them,” he said. “They also speak of worthy disciples escaping these things, of their standing in holy places and not being moved.”

In the Prophet Joseph Smith’s dedication of the Kirtland Temple, he prayed for the Lord to prepare the hearts of the Saints. Many pioneers testified that the endowments received in the Nauvoo Temple sustained them through their challenges.

“Similarly, temple endowments made available to almost all faithful members through the building of so many temples worldwide in recent years will provide the same strengthening influences for the members of our day,” President Oaks said.

‘Trust the Lord’

To the youth of the Church, President Oaks said he wants them to be optimistic.

“We are optimistic because we trust the Lord and know that He loves us and He sent us here to succeed, not fail,” President Oaks said. “And that is the message the temple gives us.”

He also called the temple a “powerful symbol for the youth.”

“We are thrilled that the youth are going to the temple with greater numbers and with increased efficiency,” he said.

The youth of Zion

Speaking at the start of the public open house two months ago, Elder Bangerter praised the members of the Church in the area who have prayed for a temple.

“They’ve knelt on their knees and prayed for a temple of God in their midst,” he said. “And now this temple will be filled with the youth of Zion.”

Preparation for the temple has been happening among many of the rising generation in the Burley area for years.

Susan Young recalls when she and others would show up once a week at the Twin Falls Idaho Temple at 3:30 a.m. to open the gates for youth standing outside waiting to do baptisms for the dead in the early morning hours.

The youth would wait for the temple workers to get dressed in their temple clothes then make their way to the baptismal font.

“The whole baptistry was filled with youth sitting in white,” said Young, who was the Twin Falls temple matron from 2016 to 2019. “There was no talking; it was so reverent you could hear a pin drop.”

Young said many of those young men and young women came from Burley, Idaho, and other small towns in the area that will be in the new Burley Idaho Temple district. Young and her husband, Paul Young, both live in Burley.

“I’m not surprised we got a temple; there are some very, very valiant people,” Susan Young said.

The house of the Lord

As the people in the Burley area prepared for this day of dedication, many miracles were seen that confirmed to them that this is the Lord’s house and the Lord’s work.

Despite often being cold and windy during November, the public open house was blessed with many unseasonably warm days.

Dee and Bonnie Jones, who served as coordinators of the Burley temple open house and dedication committee, joked that it was so warm they were offering sunscreen for those standing outside.

Other logistical challenges were also resolved as the Joneses prepared. Bonnie Jones said it was beautiful to sit back and see everything come together.

“Because it’s His work and His house,” she said.

Dee Jones said, “It was very evident through the whole process that we were being guided by the Spirit. …

“I think it just confirms that abiding testimony that we already have of the Savior and that this is His work and the temple is His holy house.”

Saints in Burley

Olivia Hobson, 17, from the Burley West Stake, said the temple means everything to her.

“Because it gives us the opportunity to do the Lord’s work, which is so important to Him, but also for us here on earth,” she shared outside the temple after the dedication. “I’m so grateful to have a temple here.”

Hobson said she feels blessed to have this temple so close. She also has plans to attend the temple throughout her life.

“I hope to get endowed in this temple when I go on my mission and hopefully I can get married and sealed here too,” she said.

Another youth, Cache Johnson, from the Burley Idaho Stake, said the temple brings a lot of hope to his life.

“It’s nice to be able to baptize for my ancestors,” he said.

Johnson has plans to attend the temple for baptisms for the dead with his friends and other youth in his ward.

Roselinda Marange, from Harare, Zimbabwe, is visiting her son in Idaho and attended the dedication at a meetinghouse in the temple district. She said the temple has blessed her life.

“The temple has a very special place in my heart,” she said.

This was Marange’s first temple dedication, but on March 1, Elder Gerrit W. Gong of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles will dedicate the Harare Zimbabwe Temple, just a few minutes away from where Marange lives.

“It’s great knowing that in the Lord’s time things will happen, things that have been promised to us, and this is one of those things,” she said.

Burley Idaho Temple

On April 4, 2021, then-Church President Russell M. Nelson announced a house of the Lord for Burley, Idaho. It was one of 20 locations he identified in the April 2021 general conference, including temples for five neighboring states.

A groundbreaking ceremony was held June 4, 2022, to commence the Burley temple’s construction phase. The event was presided over by Elder Brent H. Nielson — a Burley native and then of the Presidency of the Seventy who later received emeritus status in 2024.

The Burley temple is one of Idaho’s 11 houses of the Lord in various stages of operation, construction or planning.

Six of those temples are operating — in Idaho Falls (dedicated in 1945), Boise (1984), Rexburg (2008), Twin Falls (2008), Meridian (2017) and Pocatello (2021).

Idaho is home to more than 462,000 Church members in 1,181 congregations and 132 stakes. Seven stakes in the Mini-Cassia area are in the temple district.

Burley Idaho Temple

Address: 40 S. 150 East, Burley, Idaho 83318

Announced: April 4, 2021, by President Russell M. Nelson

Groundbreaking: June 4, 2022, presided over by Elder Brent H. Nielson of the Presidency of the Seventy

Public open house: Nov. 6 through Nov. 22, 2025, excluding Sundays

Dedicated: Jan. 11, 2026, by President Dallin H. Oaks

Property size: 10.12 acres

Building size: 45,300 square feet

Building height: 172 feet (including the spire)

Temple district: 8 stakes in Idaho’s Cassia and Minidoka counties

Indiana football continued its reload in the secondary on Sunday with the commitment of Montana State transfer cornerback Carson Williams.

Standing at 6-foot-1 and 165 pounds, Williams made his commitment to head coach Curt Cignetti and the Hoosiers after a weekend visit to Indiana. Williams has three years of eligibility remaining.

MORE: Transfer Portal Thread | Indiana football transfer portal tracker | Indiana football’s transfer portal wish list: A position-by-position breakdown of 2026 needs

Williams, who hails from Houston, Texas, amassed 46 total tackles, eight pass breakups and 2.5 tackles for loss in 2025 with the Bobcats. He also forced and recovered a fumble this past season.

The 2025 season was Williams’ second at the college level after he redshirted in 2024 as a true freshman.

Entering this portal cycle, cornerback was a large question mark for the Hoosiers. D’Angelo Ponds could potentially leave early for the NFL Draft and depth corner Amariyun Knighten has already entered the portal, but outside of those two, Indiana returns everyone else at cornerback.

Williams now joins a 2026 cornerback room that features returners Jamari Sharpe, Ryland Gandy and Jaylen Bell, while Ponds’ decision on his future is expected to come following Indiana’s run in the College Football Playoff.

Williams is rated as the No. 795 overall transfer and the No. 91-ranked cornerback in the portal.

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