Member Engagement

-Education Coordinator

A few weeks ago we posted an advertisement for a presentation on the history of the Chinese migration in the Mexicali and Imperial Valleys, located in the Mexicali Archives. While the presentation is a little out of our normal scope, the presenter, Andrew Alverez, is one of our research interns, and we wanted to show our support in his work outside of the museum, as well as inside. His presentation was on Thursday, and we were thrilled to find that not only were we supporting his efforts, but a member was as well!

Joan lives in San Diego, but does work here in the Imperial Valley, and decided since she was in the area in Thursday, she would come and see Andrew present. She stopped in to say hello to us on her way back out to San Diego to tell us what a fantastic job he did. It is so thrilling for us to see our members engage with us about the different actives in our community, and to see them not only support us as a museum but our interns and students in their individual projects.

37th Annual Children's Fair

-Education Coordinator

Yesterday was El Centro's 37th Annual Children's Fair, and as always, we were there!  The fair was brought to us by The Child Abuse Prevention Council. We featured our coiled clay program, which teaches children and adults alike a 1,000 year old traditional art method used by our local native tribe, the Kumeyaay. We had around 175 children visit our booth over the course of the day.

We also had some familiar faces come out to visit and help us run the booth. Kohl's employees volunteered to help us, just like they did for the Wilson Art Fair! I am so happy they enjoyed their time enough that they came out to join us again. Thanks to the Kohl's Cares program, and the willingness of their volunteers, Kohl's will be donating $500 dollars to the museum's education program. Thank you so much for all the hard work you put in.




We also had a new face at the booth, Humberto Dominguez came out to help volunteer as well. Humberto is a student at SDSU who is working towards a teaching credential. We appreciate his help with this program and hope to see him again.

Research Party at the Museum!

Steve O'Neil and Randy West
discussing the hunting mask. 

-Education Coordinator

What a wonderful day out here at the museum! We had Dr. Alan Garfinkel, founder and director of the California Rock Art Foundation and Principle Archaeologist for UltraSystems Environmental, Inc, and Steve O'Neil, the cultural resource manager for UltraSystems, out to study our Kumeyaay hunting mask. Along with them came Randy West, who donated the mask to the museum in 2015. The mask had been found by Randy's great grandfather in the 1920s. This mask is the only one of it's kind in the world.

Alan and Educator Coordinator
looking at the Childer's Collection.

While here, Alan and Steve, along with our staff, began to examine the artifacts from the Childers Collection. This collection came from local archaeologist Morlin Childers, and had been unavailable for study for around 30 years. While going through the collection, Alan was able to identify a collection of points, including a limace point, which is estimated to be between 7000 - 11,000 years old.

The limace point, dating back
7,000 - 11,000 years ago. 

He spent his evening with us as well, giving a presentation on the importance of bighorn sheep in ceremonies, and in his discussion, he talked about a ceremonial mask that is made from the horns of the sheep. It, like our own mask, is a one of a kind, and is on display at a museum in Utah.