By Marie Paiva, Anthropology Librarian, Marriott Library

Marie Paiva and Professor Marianna Di Paolo review some of the submittals.

Over the years, Professor Marianna Di Paolo from the Anthropology Department at the University of Utah has worked with young Shoshone and Goshute people. She was involved with the Youth Apprenticeship Program to encourage youth to pursue higher education.

What resulted was young tribal youth who worked on book design and images and collaborated with elders who  were creative editors and writers.

The youth started out as high school seniors and some moved on to college. The authors, illustrators and creative editors have been given credit for their work and their names are listed in each volume.

Many of the books are adaptations of traditional stories based on recordings from the  Wick R. Miller Collection. Some of the books focus on teaching the Shoshoni language  vocabulary and sentence structure that will engage readers in a charming way.

Shoshoni language illustrated books feature adapted traditional tales and original stories; they help to support the use of Shoshoni in a new genre.

The first Shoshoni Language Project book came out in 2013 and two more are to be published  in 2017.