Kweh!
The Wyandot Heritage Digital Archive (WHDA) is a collaborative documentary effort to create an online repository of resources connected to Wyandot history, culture, and language. These documents include census records, correspondence, diaries, drawings, journals, ledger books, legal documents, maps, material culture, paintings, photographs, postal history, treaties, and tribal rolls. The WHDA seeks to digitally reunify their archival record for the benefit of the Wyandot(te) people.
Our main objective is to assemble digital versions of primary historical sources associated with the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth century Wyandot experience in their homelands of Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Kansas and Oklahoma collected from archives, libraries, museums, historical societies, and private collections across the United States and elsewhere.
The WHDA is currently an open work in progress. While we encourage you to explore and learn, please know that we are actively cleaning our data and continuing to develop standards that best represent the Wyandotte Nation. We appreciate your patience as we undertake this multi-year project.
Tižamęh!
A Note on Terminology
The presence of Europeans in what is now the United States and Canada generated centuries of displacement and dispossession. As a result, the Wyandot(te) today encompass three distinct political nations along with their close cousin, the Wendat. Wyandotte Nation, headquartered in Wyandotte, Oklahoma, is the only federally-recognized nation in the United States. The Wyandotte are one of four members of the Wendat Confederacy, organized in 1999 as a coalition of contemporary tribal entities related to the original Wendat Nation. The confederacy includes the Wyandotte Nation, the Wyandot Nation of Kansas, the Wyandot of Anderdon Nation (Michigan), and the Huron-Wendat (Quebec). After generations of disunity, the confederacy’s aim is to provide mutual aid "so that the Wendat people may endure and flourish" for countless more generations.
Within the WHDA, we refer to the "Wyandot" when we write about the historic peoples, the "Wyandotte" when we write about the federally-recognized nation based in Oklahoma and Wendat for citizens of the Huron-Wendat Nation. When needed we will use Waⁿdat or Wyandot(te) when we refer to Wyandotte Nation, Kansas, and Anderdon citizens, and will use Waⁿdat/Wendat when we refer to all four.
Note: Waⁿdat and Wendat also refer to our languages. In many ways this makes it easier to disambiguate us. We shared a common parent language but then before european contact we diverged into Wendat and Waⁿdat. Those who moved east to what is now Quebec speak Wendat. Those who dispersed to the south and west speak Waⁿdat. Think of us as twin sisters - nearly identical but with our own unique characteristics.
Advisory Board and Editorial Committee
Billy Friend, Chief, Wyandotte Nation, Wyandotte, Oklahoma (AB)
Kim Garcia, Cultural Preservation Officer, Wyandotte Nation Cultural Center, Wyandotte, Oklahoma (AB)
Beci Wright, Cultural Researcher, Wyandotte Nation Cultural Center, Wyandotte, Oklahoma (AB and EC)
Robert S. Wicks, Director, Miami University Art Museum, Oxford, Ohio (AB and EC)
Rebecca S. Wingo, Associate Professor of History and Director of Public History, University of Cincinnati (AB and EC)
Anne Lacey, Kansas Room Librarian, Kansas City Kansas Public Library, Kansas City, Kansas (EC)
Kelsey Grimm, Library/Archive Coordinator, Glenn Black Laboratory, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana (EC)
Ciara Cotter, Cultural Assistant, Wyandotte Nation Cultural Center, Wyandotte, Oklahoma (EC)
Darcy Allred, Language Coordinator, Wyandotte Nation Cultural Center, Wyandotte, Oklahoma (EC)