About the Project


Digitizing Wassaja

The Carlos Montezuma Wassaja Newsletter: Digitization, Access and Context project will produce a digital collection and exhibition containing several volumes of a newsletter, Wassaja, that Yavapai intellectual and activist Carlos Montezuma, MD (1866-1923) self-published during the years 1916-1922. Wassaja, which took Montezuma’s Yavapai birth name, meaning “signaling” or “beckoning,” was a vital source of news about Indian affairs in an era that had few outlets for such information and contains valuable reports directly from people living within the Indian reservation system. The project will also include additional material from the ASU archives that documents the different facets of Montezuma’s career as an Indian rights leader and his relationship to his home community of Fort McDowell, giving a wider context to Wassaja.

Funding

The first phase of this project was funded by an ASU Institute for Humanities Research Seed Grant. This grant program further advances ASU faculty research and often improves the quality of grant proposals to external funding agencies. The Institute supports those projects that best address its mission and that have strong prospects of receiving external funding.

Other Support

In January 2015, the IHR Nexus Lab selected this project to be the client for its Developing... Workshop series. The Nexus Lab brought together a group of 12 ASU graduate students and staff to learn about Digital Humanities web application development by creating this very website.