Focuses on arts and culture of the Ute tribes. This book contains essays contributed by Ute cultural leaders and by other scholars, revealing the richness of Ute material culture. It is illustrated with colour photographs of 139 historic artefacts and over 40 contemporary works, as well as many historic photographs of Ute life.

Ute Land Religion in the American West, 1879–2009 is a narrative of American religion and how it intersected with land in the American West. Prior to 1881, Utes lived on the largest reservation in North America—twelve million acres of western Colorado. Brandi Denison takes a broad look at the Ute land dispossession and resistance to disenfranchisement by tracing the shifting cultural meaning of dirt, a physical thing, into land, an abstract idea. This shift was made possible through the development and deployment of an idealized American religion based on Enlightenment ideals of individualism, Victorian sensibilities about the female body, and an emerging respect for diversity and commitment to religious pluralism that was wholly dependent on a separation of economics from religion. As the narrative unfolds, Denison shows how Utes and their Anglo-American allies worked together to systematize a religion out of existing ceremonial practices, anthropological observations, and Euro-American ideals of nature. A variety of societies then used religious beliefs and practices to give meaning to the land, which in turn shaped inhabitants’ perception of an exclusive American religion. Ultimately, this movement from the tangible to the abstract demonstrates the development of a normative American religion, one that excludes minorities even as they are the source of the idealized expression.

Sondra Jones traces the metamorphosis of the Ute people from a society of small, interrelated bands of mobile hunter-gatherers to sovereign, dependent nations--modern tribes who run extensive business enterprises and government services. Weaving together the history of all Ute groups--in Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico--the narrative describes their traditional culture, including the many facets that have continued to define them as a people. Jones emphasizes how the Utes adapted over four centuries and details events, conflicts, trade, and social interactions with non-Utes and non-Indians. Being and Becoming Ute examines the effects of boarding--and public--school education; colonial wars and commerce with Hispanic and American settlers; modern world wars and other international conflicts; battles over federally instigated termination, tribal identity, and membership; and the development of economic enterprises and political power. The book also explores the concerns of the modern Ute world, including social and medical issues, transformed religion, and the fight to perpetuate Ute identity in the twenty-first century. Neither a portrait of a people frozen in a past time and place nor a tragedy in which vanishing Indians sank into oppressed oblivion, the history of the Ute people is dynamic and evolving. While it includes misfortune, injustice, and struggle, it reveals the adaptability and resilience of an American Indian people.

This is a thoroughly revised edition of the Historical Atlas of Colorado, which was coauthored by Tom Noel and published in 1994. Chock-full of the best and latest information on Colorado, this new edition features thirty new chapters, updated text, more than 100 color maps and 100 color photos, and a best-of listing of Colorado authors and books, as well as a guide to hundreds of tourist attractions. Colorado received its name (Spanish for “red”) after much debate and many possibilities, including Idaho (an “Indian” name meaning “gem of the mountains” later discovered to be a fabrication) and Yampa (Ute for “bear”). Noel includes other little-known but significant facts about the state, from its status as first state in the Union to elect women to its legislature, to its controversial “highest state” designation, elevated by the 2013 legalization of recreational cannabis. Noel and cartographer Carol Zuber-Mallison map and describe Colorado’s spectacular geography and its fascinating past. The book’s eight parts survey natural Colorado, from rivers and mountains to dinosaurs and mammals; history, from prehistoric peoples to twenty-first-century Color-oddities; mining and manufacturing, from the gold rush to alternative energy sources; agriculture, including wineries and brewpubs; transportation, from stagecoach lines to light rail; modern Colorado, from the New Deal to the present (including politics, history, and information on lynchings, executions, and prisons); recreation, covering not only hiking and skiing but also literary locales and Colorado in the movies; and tourism, encompassing historic landmarks, museums, and even cemeteries. In short, this book has information—and surprises—that anyone interested in Colorado will relish.

This book is a joint project of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs and the Utah State Historical Society. It is distributed to the book trade by Utah State University Press. The valleys, mountains, and deserts of Utah have been home to native peoples for thousands of years. Like peoples around the word, Utah's native inhabitants organized themselves in family units, groups, bands, clans, and tribes. Today, six Indian tribes in Utah are recognized as official entities. They include the Northwestern Shoshone, the Goshutes, the Paiutes, the Utes, the White Mesa or Southern Utes, and the Navajos (Dineh). Each tribe has its own government. Tribe members are citizens of Utah and the United States; however, lines of distinction both within the tribes and with the greater society at large have not always been clear. Migration, interaction, war, trade, intermarriage, common threats, and challenges have made relationships and affiliations more fluid than might be expected. In this volume, the editor and authors endeavor to write the history of Utah's first residents from an Indian perspective. An introductory chapter provides an overview of Utah's American Indians and a concluding chapter summarizes the issues and concerns of contemporary Indians and their leaders. Chapters on each of the six tribes look at origin stories, religion, politics, education, folkways, family life, social activities, economic issues, and important events. They provide an introduction to the rich heritage of Utah's native peoples. This book includes chapters by David Begay, Dennis Defa, Clifford Duncan, Ronald Holt, Nancy Maryboy, Robert McPherson, Mae Parry, Gary Tom, and Mary Jane Yazzie. Forrest Cuch was born and raised on the Uintah and Ouray Ute Indian Reservation in northeastern Utah. He graduated from Westminster College in 1973 with a bachelor of arts degree in behavioral sciences. He served as education director for the Ute Indian Tribe from 1973 to 1988. From 1988 to 1994 he was employed by the Wampanoag Tribe in Gay Head, Massachusetts, first as a planner and then as tribal administrator. Since October 1997 he has been director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs.

Catalogue of an exhibition at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts.

This study focuses on the cultural-historical environment of the 88,900-acre (35,560-ha) Valles Caldera National Preserve (VCNP) over the past four centuries of Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. governance. It includes a review and synthesis of available published and unpublished historical, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic literature about the human occupation of the area now contained within the VCNP. Documents include historical maps, texts, letters, diaries, business records, photographs, land and mineral patents, and court testimony.‍?‍?This study presents a cultural-historical framework of VCNP land use that will be useful to land managers and researchers in assessing the historical ecology of the property. It provides VCNP administrators and agents the cultural-historical background needed to develop management plans that acknowledge traditional associations with the Preserve, and offers managers additional background for structuring and acting on consultations with affiliated communities.