Malki Museum
Malki Museum
About thirty-five minutes west of downtown Joshua Tree on the Morongo Indian Reservation is the Malki Museum. Malki consists of a one room adobe brick building, the Temalpakh Ethnobotanical Garden, several small classrooms and an outdoor gathering space. It has a growing publishing house founded in 1965 which is responsible for publishing the Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology.
Malki hosts a number of seasonal and annual programs devoted to the museum’s mission of promoting scholarship and cultural awareness, and encouraging preservation of Southern California Indian cultures. One annual event held each spring is the Agave Harvest and Tasting; it’s sponsored by Malki and led by tribal friend and archaeologist Daniel McCarthy. The harvest takes you into the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument, where you learn about the seasonal migration of the Cahuilla and Kumeyaay people and their traditional harvesting and use of the agave plant. You join members of the local community in harvesting a handful of agave hearts which are then brought back to the Malki Museum and pit roasted for three days in preparation for a potluck and community hangout the following weekend.
11795 Malki Road, Banning, CA 92220