Malki Museum, Inc.

Malki Museum, Inc.

Banning, California

First Nations established the Native Arts Initiative (NAI) in 2014 to provide direct grantmaking, networking opportunities, and training and technical assistance (TTA) to Native-led arts and cultural hubs who are working to preserve and advance traditional Native arts through programming focused on supporting artists and intergenerational sharing of artistic skills and knowledge.

Under the NAI, First Nations provides awarded grantees with organizational and programmatic resources, including direct grants and technical assistance and training. Since 2014, First Nations has awarded more than $3.5 million in grant funds to a variety of eligible Native-controlled nonprofit organizations and tribal government programs under the NAI.

2023-2025 Native Arts Initiative

About Malki Museum, Inc.

This year, the historic Malki Museum celebrates its 60th anniversary. Located on the Morongo Indian Reservation in Banning, California, it is the first museum in the state founded by Native Americans. In 1964, founders Jane Penn and Dr. Katherine Siva Saubel, the museum’s first president, displayed the first exhibit of artifacts given to Jane Pablo Penn from Victoria Werwick, including herb cooking pots passed down from Penn’s father, a celebrated Cahuilla medicine man. The museum is dedicated to preserving the cultural traditions and history of Southern California Indians of San Gorgonio Pass Area, particularly the Cahuilla Indians. More than a thousand visitors a year come to the Malki Museum to view artifacts, attend annual events, participate in language and pottery-making classes, and buy historical, language-centered books on California tribes published by the nationally acclaimed Malki Museum Press.

How First Nations Will Help

Funding from First Nations will help the historic Malki Museum preserve and strengthen traditional Cahuilla arts and culture for generations to come. In line with this mission, the museum will develop a new 1,500-square-foot library and archive building to replace the current one, which is half that size. The updated facility will house library books, archives, documents, traditional pottery, and pictures in one secure, temperature-controlled, organized space, with room to grow and expand collections; and it will include two offices for administrators.

COMMUNITY PARTNER Q&A

For the Malki Museum, cultural treasures are the beautiful items that we house and display, and take painstaking care of, such as baskets, pictures, and plants. We also treasure our ceremonial songs. In addition, that phrase refers to how these artifacts are treasured by families in the Morongo community that have ancestral ties with them. When the new building is in place, we will have more room to properly display these cultural treasures for more Native families and visitors to enjoy.

We preserve traditional Cahuilla arts and culture within our community through three annual events in April, May, and October, which are always well attended: the Agave Roast, Fiesta, and Fall Gathering. For the 60th anniversary in 2024, we scheduled an extra event, the Founders Exhibit, to honor our two founders. At the Agave Roast, we cook an agave plant foraged from the mountains, and serve it with other traditional foods, such as chia seeds, cactus, beans, and fry bread, to teach people about the foods our people ate long ago. We also welcome schoolchildren from local schools year-round to learn about our history, native plants, and the Cahuilla language. And we donate books from the Malki Museum Press to classrooms. Recently, we had a group of students from New Zealand visit us. We shared our bird dances with them, and they shared their dances with us. To think that a little museum on the Morongo Reservation has gone global is just awesome!

Learn more about the Malki Museum