Qualla: Museum of the American Indian https://qualla.com/marin-museum-of-the-american-indian en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:11 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/9/q/b/b/marin-museum-of-the-american-indian-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Museum of the American Indian https://qualla.com/marin-museum-of-the-american-indian Museum of the American Indian: Introduction https://qualla.com/marin-museum-of-the-american-indian/ Photo credit CyndiVroom, CC BY-SA 4.0. It started with teenagers digging in the dirt. In the mid-1960s, members of the Novato High School Archaeology Club were uncovering artifacts from a Coast Miwok settlement in northern Marin County when they realized the objects they were finding had no legal protection. Arrowheads, shell beads, bone tools -- any of it could be carted off by collectors or bulldozed by developers. So the students did something unusual: they petitioned the Novato board of supervisors to pass an antiquities ordinance. The board approved it. The club published their findings as the "Report on the Excavation of Marin-374," which earned a write-up in the December 1967 issue of Scientific American. And club member Pete Moore pushed for a permanent home for the artifacts. By the end of 1967, the Museum of the American Indian had opened its doors -- on the very site where the Miwok had lived.

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]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/q/b/b/marin-museum-of-the-american-indian-wp/9qbb-museum-of-the-american-indian-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Museum of the American Indian: Ground Beneath Your Feet https://qualla.com/marin-museum-of-the-american-indian/ Photo credit CyndiVroom, CC BY-SA 4.0. The museum sits within Miwok Park, a 35-acre stretch of grassland and oak woodland in Novato, the northernmost city in Marin County. The park's name is not decorative. The Coast Miwok people inhabited this region for thousands of years before European contact, living in villages ...

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]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/q/b/b/marin-museum-of-the-american-indian-wp/9qbb-museum-of-the-american-indian-ground-beneath-your-feet.mp3 0:06 2 full Museum of the American Indian: From Classroom Project to Cultural Institution https://qualla.com/marin-museum-of-the-american-indian/ Photo credit CyndiVroom, CC BY-SA 4.0. The leap from high school club to functioning museum was neither obvious nor easy. The Archaeology Club's 1967 report documented their excavation methods and findings with enough rigor to catch the attention of Scientific American -- no small feat for a group of teenagers working...

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]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/q/b/b/marin-museum-of-the-american-indian-wp/9qbb-museum-of-the-american-indian-from-classroom-project-to-cultural-institution.mp3 0:06 3 full Museum of the American Indian: Seven Thousand Visitors and a Trade Feast https://qualla.com/marin-museum-of-the-american-indian/ Photo credit CyndiVroom, CC BY-SA 4.0. Today, more than 7,000 people visit the museum annually. Roughly 4,000 of those visitors are school children from around the San Francisco Bay Area, arriving on field trips that connect California's fourth-grade mission unit and broader indigenous history curriculum to physical o...

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]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/q/b/b/marin-museum-of-the-american-indian-wp/9qbb-museum-of-the-american-indian-seven-thousand-visitors-and-a-trade-feast.mp3 0:06 4 full Museum of the American Indian: The Miwok World That Was https://qualla.com/marin-museum-of-the-american-indian/ Photo credit CyndiVroom, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Coast Miwok were one of several Miwok-speaking peoples who occupied territories stretching from the Pacific Coast to the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada. The Coast Miwok specifically inhabited what is now Marin County and southern Sonoma County, living in small villages o...

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]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/q/b/b/marin-museum-of-the-american-indian-wp/9qbb-museum-of-the-american-indian-the-miwok-world-that-was.mp3 0:06 5 full