APPI Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

Last updated: April 25, 2024

This Privacy Policy describes Our policies and procedures on the collection, use and disclosure of Your information when You use the Service and tells You about Your privacy rights and how the law protects You.

We use Your Personal data to provide and improve the Service. By using the Service, You agree to the collection and use of information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy has been created with the help of the TermsFeed Privacy Policy Generator.

Interpretation and Definitions

Interpretation

The words of which the initial letter is capitalized have meanings defined under the following conditions. The following definitions shall have the same meaning regardless of whether they appear in singular or in plural.

Definitions

For the purposes of this Privacy Policy:

  • Account means a unique account created for You to access our Service or parts of our Service.

  • Company (referred to as either "the Company", "We", "Us" or "Our" in this Agreement) refers to My Store, 11-795 Malki Road, Banning.

  • Cookies are small files that are placed on Your computer, mobile device or any other device by a website, containing the details of Your browsing history on that website among its many uses.

  • Country refers to: United States

  • Device means any device that can access the Service such as a computer, a cellphone or a digital tablet.

  • Personal Data is any information that relates to an identified or identifiable individual.

  • Service refers to the Website.

  • Service Provider means any natural or legal person who processes the data on behalf of the Company. It refers to third-party companies or individuals employed by the Company to facilitate the Service, to provide the Service on behalf of the Company, to perform services related to the Service or to assist the Company in analyzing how the Service is used.

  • Usage Data refers to data collected automatically, either generated by the use of the Service or from the Service infrastructure itself (for example, the duration of a page visit).

  • Website refers to My Store, accessible from https://malkimuseum.org

  • You means the individual accessing or using the Service, or the company, or other legal entity on behalf of which such individual is accessing or using the Service, as applicable.

Collecting and Using Your Personal Data

Types of Data Collected

Personal Data

While using Our Service, We may ask You to provide Us with certain personally identifiable information that can be used to contact or identify You. Personally identifiable information may include, but is not limited to:

  • Email address

  • First name and last name

  • Phone number

  • Address, State, Province, ZIP/Postal code, City

  • Usage Data

Access account information
Email format: example@mailserver.domain
Edit account information
Email format: example@mailserver.domain
Show all requests
Email format: example@mailserver.domain
Delete account information
Email format: example@mailserver.domain

Usage Data

Usage Data is collected automatically when using the Service.

Usage Data may include information such as Your Device's Internet Protocol address (e.g. IP address), browser type, browser version, the pages of our Service that You visit, the time and date of Your visit, the time spent on those pages, unique device identifiers and other diagnostic data.

When You access the Service by or through a mobile device, We may collect certain information automatically, including, but not limited to, the type of mobile device You use, Your mobile device unique ID, the IP address of Your mobile device, Your mobile operating system, the type of mobile Internet browser You use, unique device identifiers and other diagnostic data.

We may also collect information that Your browser sends whenever You visit our Service or when You access the Service by or through a mobile device.

Tracking Technologies and Cookies

We use Cookies and similar tracking technologies to track the activity on Our Service and store certain information. Tracking technologies used are beacons, tags, and scripts to collect and track information and to improve and analyze Our Service. The technologies We use may include:

  • Cookies or Browser Cookies. A cookie is a small file placed on Your Device. You can instruct Your browser to refuse all Cookies or to indicate when a Cookie is being sent. However, if You do not accept Cookies, You may not be able to use some parts of our Service. Unless you have adjusted Your browser setting so that it will refuse Cookies, our Service may use Cookies.
  • Flash Cookies. Certain features of our Service may use local stored objects (or Flash Cookies) to collect and store information about Your preferences or Your activity on our Service. Flash Cookies are not managed by the same browser settings as those used for Browser Cookies. For more information on how You can delete Flash Cookies, please read "Where can I change the settings for disabling, or deleting local shared objects?" available at https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/disable-local-shared-objects-flash.html#main_Where_can_I_change_the_settings_for_disabling__or_deleting_local_shared_objects_
  • Web Beacons. Certain sections of our Service and our emails may contain small electronic files known as web beacons (also referred to as clear gifs, pixel tags, and single-pixel gifs) that permit the Company, for example, to count users who have visited those pages or opened an email and for other related website statistics (for example, recording the popularity of a certain section and verifying system and server integrity).

Cookies can be "Persistent" or "Session" Cookies. Persistent Cookies remain on Your personal computer or mobile device when You go offline, while Session Cookies are deleted as soon as You close Your web browser. You can learn more about cookies on TermsFeed website article.

We use both Session and Persistent Cookies for the purposes set out below:

  • Necessary / Essential Cookies

    Type: Session Cookies

    Administered by: Us

    Purpose: These Cookies are essential to provide You with services available through the Website and to enable You to use some of its features. They help to authenticate users and prevent fraudulent use of user accounts. Without these Cookies, the services that You have asked for cannot be provided, and We only use these Cookies to provide You with those services.

  • Cookies Policy / Notice Acceptance Cookies

    Type: Persistent Cookies

    Administered by: Us

    Purpose: These Cookies identify if users have accepted the use of cookies on the Website.

  • Functionality Cookies

    Type: Persistent Cookies

    Administered by: Us

    Purpose: These Cookies allow us to remember choices You make when You use the Website, such as remembering your login details or language preference. The purpose of these Cookies is to provide You with a more personal experience and to avoid You having to re-enter your preferences every time You use the Website.

For more information about the cookies we use and your choices regarding cookies, please visit our Cookies Policy or the Cookies section of our Privacy Policy.

Use of Your Personal Data

The Company may use Personal Data for the following purposes:

  • To provide and maintain our Service, including to monitor the usage of our Service.

  • To manage Your Account: to manage Your registration as a user of the Service. The Personal Data You provide can give You access to different functionalities of the Service that are available to You as a registered user.

  • For the performance of a contract: the development, compliance and undertaking of the purchase contract for the products, items or services You have purchased or of any other contract with Us through the Service.

  • To contact You: To contact You by email, telephone calls, SMS, or other equivalent forms of electronic communication, such as a mobile application's push notifications regarding updates or informative communications related to the functionalities, products or contracted services, including the security updates, when necessary or reasonable for their implementation.

  • To provide You with news, special offers and general information about other goods, services and events which we offer that are similar to those that you have already purchased or enquired about unless You have opted not to receive such information.

  • To manage Your requests: To attend and manage Your requests to Us.

  • For business transfers: We may use Your information to evaluate or conduct a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some or all of Our assets, whether as a going concern or as part of bankruptcy, liquidation, or similar proceeding, in which Personal Data held by Us about our Service users is among the assets transferred.

  • For other purposes: We may use Your information for other purposes, such as data analysis, identifying usage trends, determining the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns and to evaluate and improve our Service, products, services, marketing and your experience.

We may share Your personal information in the following situations:

  • With Service Providers: We may share Your personal information with Service Providers to monitor and analyze the use of our Service, to contact You.
  • For business transfers: We may share or transfer Your personal information in connection with, or during negotiations of, any merger, sale of Company assets, financing, or acquisition of all or a portion of Our business to another company.
  • With Affiliates: We may share Your information with Our affiliates, in which case we will require those affiliates to honor this Privacy Policy. Affiliates include Our parent company and any other subsidiaries, joint venture partners or other companies that We control or that are under common control with Us.
  • With business partners: We may share Your information with Our business partners to offer You certain products, services or promotions.
  • With other users: when You share personal information or otherwise interact in the public areas with other users, such information may be viewed by all users and may be publicly distributed outside.
  • With Your consent: We may disclose Your personal information for any other purpose with Your consent.

Retention of Your Personal Data

The Company will retain Your Personal Data only for as long as is necessary for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy. We will retain and use Your Personal Data to the extent necessary to comply with our legal obligations (for example, if we are required to retain your data to comply with applicable laws), resolve disputes, and enforce our legal agreements and policies.

The Company will also retain Usage Data for internal analysis purposes. Usage Data is generally retained for a shorter period of time, except when this data is used to strengthen the security or to improve the functionality of Our Service, or We are legally obligated to retain this data for longer time periods.

Transfer of Your Personal Data

Your information, including Personal Data, is processed at the Company's operating offices and in any other places where the parties involved in the processing are located. It means that this information may be transferred to — and maintained on — computers located outside of Your state, province, country or other governmental jurisdiction where the data protection laws may differ than those from Your jurisdiction.

Your consent to this Privacy Policy followed by Your submission of such information represents Your agreement to that transfer.

The Company will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that Your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy and no transfer of Your Personal Data will take place to an organization or a country unless there are adequate controls in place including the security of Your data and other personal information.

Disclosure of Your Personal Data

Business Transactions

If the Company is involved in a merger, acquisition or asset sale, Your Personal Data may be transferred. We will provide notice before Your Personal Data is transferred and becomes subject to a different Privacy Policy.

Law enforcement

Under certain circumstances, the Company may be required to disclose Your Personal Data if required to do so by law or in response to valid requests by public authorities (e.g. a court or a government agency).

Other legal requirements

The Company may disclose Your Personal Data in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to:

  • Comply with a legal obligation
  • Protect and defend the rights or property of the Company
  • Prevent or investigate possible wrongdoing in connection with the Service
  • Protect the personal safety of Users of the Service or the public
  • Protect against legal liability

Security of Your Personal Data

The security of Your Personal Data is important to Us, but remember that no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage is 100% secure. While We strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect Your Personal Data, We cannot guarantee its absolute security.

Children's Privacy

Our Service does not address anyone under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 13. If You are a parent or guardian and You are aware that Your child has provided Us with Personal Data, please contact Us. If We become aware that We have collected Personal Data from anyone under the age of 13 without verification of parental consent, We take steps to remove that information from Our servers.

If We need to rely on consent as a legal basis for processing Your information and Your country requires consent from a parent, We may require Your parent's consent before We collect and use that information.

Links to Other Websites

Our Service may contain links to other websites that are not operated by Us. If You click on a third party link, You will be directed to that third party's site. We strongly advise You to review the Privacy Policy of every site You visit.

We have no control over and assume no responsibility for the content, privacy policies or practices of any third party sites or services.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may update Our Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify You of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page.

We will let You know via email and/or a prominent notice on Our Service, prior to the change becoming effective and update the "Last updated" date at the top of this Privacy Policy.

You are advised to review this Privacy Policy periodically for any changes. Changes to this Privacy Policy are effective when they are posted on this page.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, You can contact us:

  • By email: malkimuseummail@gmail.com

  • By visiting this page on our website: https://malkimuseum.org

  • By phone number: 951-849-7289

Jane Pablo Penn

Jane Penn, a Wanikik (or Pass area) Cahuilla, was raised to learn the importance of her Native heritage and she lived and cherished it throughout her life.

Dr. Katherine Siva Saubel

Cahuilla Elder and museum founder Dr. Katherine Siva Saubel was a remarkable woman who lived through many changes and worked tirelessly to link us to a rich and unique Cahuilla past.

Jane Penn

Jane Penn, a Wanikik (or Pass area) Cahuilla, was raised to learn the importance of her Native heritage and she lived and cherished it throughout her life. She was born on May 6, 1910. Her father, William Pablo, was one of the last and greatest medicine men. Her grandmother, who lived to be 120 years old, and an aunt, who lived to be 96, both told her stories as a child of their Wanikik Cahuilla heritage. Many of her nephews sang birdsongs and someof her uncles were even Ceremonial House singers, knowing the songs of only a special few.

As a young girl in the early 1920s, Jane attended St. Boniface School in Banning. In those days, the land surrounding the town of Banning and the Malki Reservation (now called the Morongo Reservation) was thick with almond and apricot groves. As a teenager, Jane wanted to see more of the world and went to live with a sister in Los Angeles. Living in the larger city of Los Angeles, Jane’s experience and knowledge expanded to include the world outside of the reservation. This experience paved the road for her return to the Morongo Reservation at age 49 with an even stronger conviction to create a place where her culture could be preserved and taught for generations to come. In Los Angeles, she worked in a factory during WWII that manufactured plane parts for the war, and she also met her husband Elmer there. He returned with her to live on the Morongo Reservation, where she had some family land left to her.

In 1952 Jane began working at the Banning shirt factory, making 60 cents an hour. There she joined forces with another young Cahuilla woman from the Los Coyotes reservation, living on the Morongo Reservation with her husband Mariano Saubel, who was Jane’s cousin. That woman was named Katherine Siva Saubel. Over time the two women realized they had similar visions and strengths and first exercised their personalities by forming a labor union within the shirt factory – the first union in Banning. At first only four women joined the union, but when the factory decided to raise their wages by $1.00 per hour (to a total of $1.60 per hour), it became a success and many joined.

Lowell Bean, a young ethnographer, discovered Jane and the Morongo Reservation in his quest to find educational materials for his anthropology degree. Jane offered to teach Lowell about her culture in exchange for his help, and he agreed. The first thing Jane had Lowell assist with was not the recording of cultural heritage he may have been hoping for. Instead, it was to gather and clean eggs in the mornings from her chicken ranch in exchange for cultural discussion in the afternoon. One of Lowell’s fond memories of Jane was that she was an excellent teacher, kind, but “she was not afraid to bawl you out if you needed it.” Jane introduced Katherine to Lowell Bean, and a great collaboration began which produced many books, events, and other opportunities.

When Jane’s elderly aunt Margaret Pablo and cousin Victoria Weirick passed away, they both left her their collection of artifacts, which she received in 1958. She wanted to preserve the traditions, culture, and language that were slowly slipping away as elders died and many left the reservations to seek jobs, so in 1964 she brought together a group of Native and non-Native friends she had known for years and set out to found the first non-profit Indian museum on a California reservation. Among these friends were Lowell Bean and Katherine Siva Saubel.

Jane asked Katherine to be the Museum Board President because of her knowledge of the Cahuilla culture and language, and Jane herself assumed the role of director and treasurer. Their vision for the museum expanded to include all of Southern California’s Native American tribes, not just their own Cahuilla people. Both Katherine’s husband Mariano and Jane’s husband Elmer helped to form the museum with their hearts, hands, and minds. Mariano would begin building fences and ramadas by himself and soon the community showed up one by one and began to help. Katherine had the better car so she began driving Jane, spending many hours together in the car discussing their ideas. Jane and Katherine’s partnership enabled the dream of a museum and cultural center to become a reality.

Jane Penn was co-founder and director of the Malki Museum on the Morongo Reservation, and her efforts toward protection of the Indian heritage won her honors from the Indian and white communities. She was a winner of the SCOPE (self help, citizenship, opportunity, principle, education) award of the Pacific Region of the Soroptimist Federation of the Americas. She was one of eight distinguished Native people named as an Honored Indian Historian by the American Indian Historical Society, and in 1977 was appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown as the first Native American woman from Southern California to sit on the Native American Heritage Commission. She was a member of the State Inner-Tribal Council, a member of the Morongo Tribal council, and an honorary member of the Soroptimist International of Banning. Jane was one of two American Indians to attend the International Conference on Discrimination against Indigenous Populations in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1977, one of the many forums at which she spoke out against the deprivation of the Indians of their lands and heritage.

When a visitor to the Malki Museum once asked if anyone would shoot him if he dug into the Indian graveyard, she replied, “Well, if nobody else does, I will. Why don’t you tell me where your relatives are buried and I’ll go dig them up?”

Jane died at age 69, on Saturday, March 22, 1980 at Loma Linda University Medical Center, following a lengthy illness. She had no children, but dedicated the last 20 years of her life to preserving her Native American heritage and culture.

Katherine later took Jane’s place on the Native American Heritage Commission, and continued to work preserving their culture in her capacity as President until her passing. It is due to the extraordinary vision of these two strong women who fought to keep their heritage alive that we have the privilege of enjoying the Malki Museum today.

Katherine Siva Saubel

Cahuilla Elder and museum founder Dr. Katherine Siva Saubel is a remarkable woman who has lived through many changes and has worked tirelessly to link us to a rich and unique Cahuilla past.

Born on March 7, 1920 to Cahuilla speaking parents at Pachawal pa (the upper village of the Los Coyotes Indian Reservation) Katherine spent the first years of her life in the mountains above Warner Springs, up where only Cahuilla was spoken. She had 11 siblings in her immediate family (6 boys and 5 girls), and she was the eighth.

At the time, the Los Coyotes Reservation was much more isolated than it is today. Undoubtedly this isolation is in part to thank for her superb command of her native tongue and for her profound understanding of Cahuilla culture. After over eighty years of having to survive in an increasingly English world, Katherine is still very much a dominant native speaker of her dialect of Cahuilla known as “Mountain Cahuilla,” and the Cahuilla culture is still very much alive in Katherine’s heart, if nowhere else.

On advice from a Cahuilla shaman, Mrs. Saubel’s father moved his family out of Los Coyotes to a warmer part of the Cahuilla territory. In 1923, when she was almost four years old, the entire family settled on the land of Pedro Chino (her mother’s uncle) at the Agua Caliente Reservation in Palm Springs. There another dialect of Cahuilla, known as “Pass Cahuilla” was spoken, and Katherine learned it as well, even though it is the dialect of Cahuilla most divergent from Mountain Cahuilla.

In 1925 or 1926, Mrs. Saubel’s maternal grandmother — a native speaker of the third and final dialect of Cahuilla known as “Desert Cahuilla”— came to live with her daughter’s family. From her maternal grandmother, Mrs. Saubel learned to understand the Desert Cahuilla dialect, which was not that different from her own native Mountain Cahuilla dialect.

It was also around this time that Katherine entered the segregated elementary school in Palm Springs, where she acquired English by the time honored sink-or-swim pedagogical method. She initially spoke not one word of English, but she learned by observing and figuring out what was being said. No one taught her; she was just put in the back of the classroom and ignored, but she still learned.

Katherine was a “tomboy,” often playing and rough housing with her brothers – running around, climbing trees, and sometimes making mischief. Her grandmother once made her some dolls to play with, and sat to play with her, but Katherine did not like it, and upset her grandmother by throwing the dolls up in a tree so she could climb up into it.

After she finished primary school, Katherine wanted to go to high school, but at the time there was not one in Palm Springs yet, so she had to take a bus with white students to Banning. She was athletic and enjoyed sports like softball and archery. She was the best archer in the all-male class. Halfway through high school, the Palm Springs high school was finished, so she transferred and was the first Native American or (Indian) woman to graduate from there.

As a very young woman Katherine began to realize the imminent loss of Native American culture and knowledge, which had been passed down through generations. During her high school years, she kept a notebook describing all of the familiar native plants and their uses as foods, tools, and medicines. Her family was able to survive well during the Great Depression of the 1920s by going back to their traditional ways of hunting and gathering. They never went hungry, and Katherine learned much from her mother, who was a great cook, gatherer, and medicine woman. Her mother instilled in her the idea that you must take care of the earth because it takes care of you, and if you destroy it you are destroying yourself.

Since childhood, Katherine has always had a fiery wit, an unwavering bluntness, and a strong sense of justice. She was never afraid to stand up for her people and their rights. During high school she had to wait at a bus stop on the reservation in front of a small restaurant that had a sign in the window saying “Whites Only.” When she noticed the sign, she marched into the restaurant and told the owner to take it down because his restaurant was on reservation land and he had no right to keep Indians out of a restaurant on their own land. The owner didn’t say a word when she told him this (she thinks he was shocked to have an Indian teenage girl telling him what for), but later when she walked by the restaurant the sign had been taken down.

Katherine’s father Juan encouraged her keen intelligence and modeled to her the importance of education. He had never attended school as a child, but enrolled in St. Boniface at the age of twenty and learned English, Spanish, and Latin in three years.  He did not have much formal education, but seemed to have a knack for picking up languages. He also spoke Cupeno, Luiseno, and bits of other Native languages along with his own Cahuilla language. Despite Katherine’s desire to continue her education after high school, funding for a much desired nursing career was not available for reservation Indians at the time.When she was 18, Katherine met Wanikik Cahuilla Mariano Saubel at the last Cahuilla ceremonial gathering, on the Palm Springs Reservation. She noticed him right away across the fire, and told her girlfriend next to her, “I’m going to marry that man.” She asked her nephew, Robert, who Mariano was, and Robert introduced them. They spent the rest of the ceremony in the kitchen, talking the night away. Two weeks later, Mariano borrowed his father’s car to take her out. They dated for two years, and had to wait for permission to marry because one of their elder relatives thought they were too closely related (by Cahuilla standards) to get married. Finally, her father told her that it would be okay, and that they were not too closely related.

In 1940, at the age of twenty, Katherine married Mariano Saubel, who lived at the Morongo Reservation near Banning (where both Mountain and Pass Cahuilla were spoken, as well as the distantly related Serrano language). Katherine describes Mariano as a very loving and gentle man, who loved animals and children, saw two sides to every story, and did not speak badly of others. Just one year and a half after they were married, Mariano was drafted for WWII. Their son Allen was born just before Mariano was sent overseas in 1943; luckily, he was able to take a little time away from training to come home and meet his son before being deployed to serve in North Africa and Italy. He was gone for three years; Katherine wrote him every day. She spent most of her time taking care of Allen and working their small family farm and orchard with her in-laws. As Katherine puts it, she “worked like a man” with her father in law, and learned the hard way how to drive a tractor and irrigate the crops. She enjoyed it more than cooking, housework, and basket weaving, which she says were never her strong points. Mariano’s mother was a well-known Cahuilla basket maker, and she watched the baby while Katherine worked in the fields and orchards.

Mariano and Katherine Saubel were married for forty-five years, until Mariano Saubel passed away in 1985. Allen was their only son, but they also helped raise his four children, as well as nieces and nephews. Mariano was extremely supportive of Katherine’s work to preserve Cahuilla and other Native cultures, and worked with her to found and build the Malki Museum.

In 1958 Katherine was introduced to Lowell Bean, who was then a student of ethnology and anthropology at UCLA. This began a forty year collaboration on Cahuilla culture. Lowell Bean is a man as remarkable as Mrs. Saubel in his own way, for Dr. Bean has managed not only to become an eminent scholar on the Cahuilla (Bean 1969, 1972, 1972, 1989), but has also become a lifelong friend of Mrs. Saubel’s. One need only observe Mrs. Saubel and Dr. Bean interacting for a short time to understand that theirs is not a distant, predatory relationship between Indian informant and academician, but rather a friendship built on mutual respect. Soon after they met, Dr. Bean introduced her to Dr. William Bright, Professor of Linguistics and Anthropology at UCLA. Her life began to change – her formal education had begun.

She entered willingly into the new world of academics, and became a catalyst for sharing and learning in the academic surroundings of universities and museums. Mrs. Saubel realized that the Cahuilla were in danger of being completely engulfed and forgotten by the dominant English speaking society which surrounded her people. She resolved to make it her life’s work to help document the Cahuilla culture and language before it was too late.

The Kennedy Scholarship for Native Americans in 1962 allowed Katherine (at the age of 42) to travel to the University of Chicago and the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she studied the fundamentals of ethnology, anthropology, and linguistics. She then began giving seminars and study groups at UCLA under the direction of Dr. William Bright.

Together, Dr. Bean and Mrs. Saubel (1972) authored Temalpakh, a monumental yet easily readable work detailing the ethnobotanical knowledge of the Cahuilla (much of the information comes from Mrs. Saubel’s mother, who was a Cahuilla medicine woman). Dr. Bean and Mrs. Saubel continue to be involved in anthropological scholarship on the Cahuilla.

Katherine Siva Saubel has since become known internationally as a Native American scholar and appears in the biographical Reference Encyclopedia of the American Indian (1967) and many other biographical reference works.

She is a forceful communicator, acclaimed public speaker, and activist in matters of Indian rights. Katherine has brought her talents to bear on public forums, universities, TV, films, and radio. She has traveled and lectured widely, including places like UCLA, California State University Hayward, UC Riverside (where she served as Regent’s Lecturer during the spring of 1990), the University of Cologne, Germany (where she conducted seminars for anthropology students in 1971), and the Hachinohe University in Japan in 1997. She has traveled to Germany (1971, 1991), Japan (1997), and New Zealand (2002). She also spoke at UC San Diego in 1994 for American Indian Youth Motivation Day.

Katherine has served as member and chairwoman on the Los Coyotes tribal council for many years. As a leader of her people, Mrs. Saubel has worked tirelessly on many important issues – the preservation of sacred sites, prevention of hazardous waste disposal on Native Reservation lands, reburial of Native bones and sacred artifacts to maintain the sanctity of ancient burial grounds and sites, and testifying before the U. S. Senate, the California State Assembly, and other government agencies and committees. Her skill in bridging differences and in negotiating solutions to problems is tempered by a sense of humor and wisdom.

She has also served as a member of the Governor’s California Native American Heritage Commission and has been active on many fronts concerned with preserving California Indian culture and historical sites. Her work on the commission has brought attention to the cultural resources, the sacred sites, and the need for an amendment to the religious freedom act. She is proud to have reburied many ancient remains in the sacred manner, with the ancient and sacred Cahuilla birdsongs.

She has worked with many noted anthropologists and linguists, including Professor Lowell Bean, and Hansjakob Seiler (a German linguist), who with her assistance published two studies of the Cahuilla language. She also worked with Japanese linguist Dr. Kojiro Hioki, from the Hachinohe University. Drs. Seiler and Hioki worked together with her to publish an updated book on the Cahuilla language in 2006.

Her published works include Temalpakh: Cahuilla Indian Knowledge and Usage of Plants (1972) with Dr. Lowell Bean; Cahuilla Ethnobotanical Notes: Oak with Dr. Lowell Bean (University of California Archaeological Survey Report, 1962); Kunvachmal: A Cahuilla Tale (The Indian Historian, 1969); Cahuilla Ethnobotanical Notes: Mesquite and Screwbean, with Lowell Bean (University of California Archaeological Survey Report, 1968); I’Isniyatam (Designs) a children’s book, 1980; and editorials in the Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology.

Overall, Katherine awakened interest in the Cahuilla language, not only in the universities and with foreign scholars, but also with young Native Americans. Mrs. Saubel’s ability to stand by her beliefs and heritage when challenged by different factions of tribal government or private interest groups is almost legendary. She blends hard work and fierce determination with wonderful laughter and kind words to those in need. Her innate ability to interact with people of all walks of life and her openness to the achievements of others carry the marks of a great woman. She has been able to influence and inspire others around her, and encourages honor and respect for nature and tradition. Her recognition of the different parts men and women played in the preservation of cultural and spiritual life has also made her a most effective and valuable representative of her people.

Malki Museum Beginnings

The Museum began as the dream of a few hopeful women, and was passed down to Jane K. Penn, a Wanikik Cahuilla, who, with the help of others, translated this dream into a reality.

More than four decades ago, Mrs. Penn began to hear the dreams and suggestions of her aunt, the late Margaret Pablo, who wanted to leave the rich cultural heritage of her people in Mrs. Penn’s keeping, and who wanted to bring enrichment to the lives of Indians and non-Indians alike. Mrs. Pablo was the grandniece of Ygindio Gabriel, a chief of the Wanikik Cahuilla.

Ygindio had been chief during the tragic time when California was being heavily settled by the Melkish (white man) and had just become a state of the Union in 1850. It was he who signed the Treaty of Temecula, for his band, in 1852. This treaty was never ratified by the Melkish (white man), but it will be forever remembered by the Indian. More than 20 bands of Southern California Indians signed that paper.

Margaret Pablo, a remarkable woman, saw beyond the treachery of the treaty to a greater understanding between the Indian and his new neighbors. She wanted to share the Indian culture with the newcomers, and also to help rekindle the spark of cultural pride and identity in the hearts of her Indian people, who had begun to leave the reservations and forget their traditions.

Mrs. Penn’s elderly cousin, Victoria Weirick, of Wanikik and Kawasic (Palm Springs) Cahuilla descent, felt the same. As Margaret Pablo had done, Mrs. Weirick left her precious artifacts to Jane Penn for safekeeping. Among these were mortreros, an herb cooking pot, and other precious materials to add to Margaret Pablo’s collection. Through Mrs. Weirick, Mrs. Penn received the herb cooking pots used by her own father, William Pablo, one of the last and greatest Cahuilla medicine men.

When Mrs. Penn received these items in 1958, she confided to friends that she wanted to display them in a museum. Among these friends was ethnographer Lowell Bean—then a graduate student who was to play a vital role in the realization of the Malki dream—and Mrs. Katherine Siva Saubel—a mountain Cahuilla of the Los Coyotes Reservation near Warner Springs. Mrs. Siva Saubel was related to Mrs. Penn by marriage, and Mrs. Penn asked her to become Malki’s first president because of her knowledge of Cahuilla language and culture. She has continued in that capacity to this day.

At that time, Mrs. Penn had in her home an outstanding collection of Cahuilla arts and crafts, which she informally showed to any who wanted to see. She conceived the idea of a museum to be known as “Malki,” which is the Cahuilla word for “dodging” and the original name of the Morongo Reservation. (Morongo is a word of Serrano origin, taken from John Morongo, a leader at the turn of the century when the Serrano people of the northern mountains and desert were forced into a coexistence with the Cahuilla at the then-called “Malki Reservation.” It was later renamed Morongo by the federal government.)

In February 1965, Malki officially opened its doors to the public, and was dedicated in a traditional ceremony where nearly 1,000 Native and non-Natives gathered.

Through the years, Malki has remained dedicated to its goals of preservation and education. After Jane Penn’s death in 1982, Dr. Katherine Siva Saubel continued the dream and until her passing she actively filled her role as museum president. She persisted in sharing her knowledge and understanding of Cahuilla culture, and had accomplished much in her lifetime.

Malki is still relatively young, and still struggling, but in a way it is as old as time itself—as an embodiment of the belief that man is really a brother to man, that all men are created equal, and that men today can learn from the past.

Since then, much growth has occurred: the construction of a permanent adobe brick museum, a growing academic publishing company and the purchase of another well-established publishing house, the re-design of the Temalpakh Ethnobotanical Garden (which houses an array of the plants used by the Cahuilla for food, housing, and medicine), several educational projects and annual events, and the ability to provide limited scholarships to Southern California Indian students, among other things. Currently, a research library and lecture hall are in progress, and there is still more work to be done.

Jane Penn and Katherine Siva Saubel with Joe Lomas at Malki Museum Fiesta 1964.

Jane Penn's Home which housed the first Malki Museum.