Community Corner
Novato Museum Demonstrating the Art of Survival
Tiny facility's staff working for no pay as funding dries up for North Bay cultural treasure. The museum's director hopes to keep it breathing until a bigger facility is built.
To say that Marin Museum of the American Indian doesn't have a very big footprint would be an understatement.
The 800-square foot, two-story facility can be hard to spot. A small portion of its roof barely peeks out a small patch of clearing on a Google satellite map amid thick brush on the sprawling 35-acre Miwok Park it sits on.
These days, those who've invested a part of themselves into the museum are doing what they can to make sure it doesn't slip completely out of sight.
The recent death of a prominent donor has left Novato's little cultural engine that could gasping for air.
Scrambling to meet day-to-day expenses, the museum's two full-time staffers have been working without pay for months.
The museum has been a popular attraction since it went up out of necessity during a late 1960s excavations as a place to store cultural artifacts.
Museum director Colleen Hicks says the North Bay's cultural treasure draws tens of thousands visitors each year from around the world. She is hoping to keep the museum afloat amid a difficult transition, with the construction of a bigger and better facility more than two years away from completion at best.
Battling Stereotypes
Hicks described persistent struggles against misconceptions about her museum's needs during fundraising efforts that she admits are not going well.
"I constantly battle a prejudice and a stereotype," Hicks said. "People think that "all (Native Americans) are rich."
The casino money that's thought to be pouring in doesn't exist, she insists, noting that tribal leaders who've expressed interest in supporting her museum under the right circumstances are years away from opening up and are "living on borrowed money themselves."
"I've Traveled around the Bay Area for seven years and I've talked to every civic group and every historic group that I could find and I come up against that belief when I asked for help every time."
Hicks is committed to keeping the museum's doors open and programs up and running. Approximately 40,000 students from every Bay Area county visit the museum each year. The museum also offers special exhibitions twice a year and other events and lectures throughout the year.
Hicks said the museum is among the most significant Native American cultural facilities in the Bay Area.
"We're a Native American center on a Native American site, and that's really unique," she said.
A Brighter Future
The good news for Hicks' group is that efforts to build a new museum have garnered some momentum.
Grant money has been used to pay for architectural designs and soil testing, the early requirements for getting the more modern facility built.
The planned 3,000-square-foot temperature and humidity controlled facility will be "all the things that it should be," Hicks said.
Hicks believes that the construction of a more modern facility will attract more benefactors, whether the casino money comes in or not.
"I think if people saw a new upgraded building here that would help a lot," she said, noting that the current facility "just looks so small and insignificant sitting in the park."
She said meetings with city and community leaders have been encouraging.
"I'm Native American myself and I believe very passionately in what we do here," Hicks said.
"Native Americans are the invisible minority. Most people don't even realize that the native people are still here, so I think it's very important that there be a place where people talk about the natives of the past and the present and their relationship with the land of the past. The native people are still here and the cultures are still here. We're very lucky as a country that we still have our indigenous people here."
