About UAIDA

The Utah American Indian Digital Archive (UAIDA) is a gateway to the best resources regarding Utah’s Native American tribes. Including articles, books, government documents, tribal documents, oral histories, photographs, and maps pertaining to each of Utah’s tribes—the Northwestern Shoshones, Goshutes, Paiutes, Utah Navajos, Northern Utes, and White Mesa Utes—the archive captures the complicated history of Utah’s tribes from multiple perspectives and is the first website of its kind to incorporate such broad information regarding the native peoples of the state.

The project stems from forty years of research conducted by the University of Utah’s American West Center on behalf of Utah’s Indians. Pioneers in Western historical scholarship because their work acknowledged the central role of American Indians, American West Center staff traveled to depositories throughout the country: the National Archives in Washington D.C. and its regional branches in Kansas City, Fort Worth, Denver, Seattle, and elsewhere; the Library of Congress and especially its Map Division; the Museum of the American Indian; the Denver Public Library; the Pennsylvania Historical Society; and the libraries and archives of twenty-some universities. The products of this research were wide ranging, from evidence to support tribal land or water claims to material for tribal textbooks. The goal of UAIDA is to offer students, researchers, and, especially, tribal members unprecedented access to information about the rich history and culture of Utah’s native tribes. UAIDA is a joint venture between the American West Center and the J. Willard Marriott Library’s Special Collections Department at the University of Utah, with generous support from the State of Utah’s Division of Indian Affairs and Department of Community and Culture.

UAIDA is now available to researchers, but staff at the American West Center continues to collect and digitize documents for Utah’s tribes. We will continue to work closely with Utah’s tribes in this process, to ensure that the history and culture of each tribe is presented as accurately and balanced as possible.

American West Center PI: Dr. Matthew Basso

Project Director: Annie Hanshew

UAIDA Co-coordinator: John Alexander

UAIDA Co-coordinator: Michelle Fellows

Phase One Researcher: Michaele Smith

Chief Consultant: Dr. Floyd O'Neil

Marriott Library Special Collections PI: Dr. Gregory Thompson

Website Designer/Developer: Leah Martin

Consultant: Debbie Rakhsha

Technologies Specialists: Kinza Masood and Kelly Taylor