More than half of $535,000 received by the city in Proposition 202 funds from the Gila River Indian Community will go to a new Sonoran desert’s first peoples exhibit at the Arizona Museum of Natural History in Mesa.
The Mesa City Council on Aug. 29 voted to accept the funds from the Gila River Indian Community and administer them as pass-through grants to designated awardees.
Proposition 202, passed with the 2002 gaming compact in Arizona, directs participating tribal governments to share 12% of their gaming revenues with surrounding local governments. Nonprofit organizations are eligible to compete with a local government agreeing to serve as a pass-through agent.
“This year the Gila River Indian Community has generously awarded $535,000 from its 2022 12% revenue cycle to agencies in and around Mesa and serving Mesa residents. Of that, there is a lovely amount for the Arizona Museum of Natural History Foundation for their program,” Grants Coordinator Sharon Skinner said at the Mesa City Council’s Aug. 25 work session.
The museum foundation will receive $300,000 paid over the next two years, Cindy Ornstein, Mesa’s director of arts and culture, said at the work session.
“I’m very happy to say we are so grateful to the Gila River Indian Community for the grant,” she said. “The overview is that we will be renovating the former Southwest cultures gallery to more accurately and engagingly tell the story of the culture, the history, the stories of the Sonoran desert first peoples.”
The Arizona Museum of Natural History, 53 N. Macdonald in downtown Mesa, includes information such as the dinosaurs that roamed the area for 150 million years, native cultures of Western North America and how the area of the city of Mesa dates back more than 2,000 years when the Hohokam people arrived and built sophisticated water canals.
The Southwest cultures exhibit at the museum was closed in May for renovations that are to take two years to complete, according to the museum’s website at arizonamuseumofnaturalhistory.org.
The new exhibit will be in a 3,100-square-foot section of the museum, Simon Tipene Adlam, director of the Arizona Museum of Natural History, said at the council work session.
“These galleries are our oldest and most outdated in the museum and did not align with our mission and values and with being a world-class natural history museum,” he said.
For the new exhibit, the museum has been meeting with Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, Gila River Indian Community, the Ak-Chin Indian Community and the Tohono O’Odham Nation, Emily Early, the city’s curator of anthropology, said at the work session.
“The consultation basis has built a trust-based relationship with our tribal partners that has provided a lot of support including in fundraising,” she said, adding that money has also been received from private foundations and other organizations.
The new exhibit will largely be based on objectives that were developed with the four tribes, Early said.
“And our big push is to demonstrate that there is a cultural continuum so that these ancestral groups — the peoples — didn’t simply die out. That can be a bit confusing in a natural history setting when you walk through spaces that show extinct animals. We want to make sure that all of our visitors understand that there are descendant groups still in this area. To that end, some of the funds that we raised so far are earmarked towards hiring indigenous artists who are local,” she said.
In addition to the $300,000 to be used by the Arizona Museum of Natural History Foundation for the Sonoran desert’s first peoples exhibit, the funds from the Gila River Indian Community include:
$15,000 for one year to House of Refuge Inc. for its adopt-a-home program to provide transitional housing and wrap-around services for homeless families;
$17,500 for one year to Desert Sounds Performing Arts Inc. for the Jeremy Project to provide musical instruments to marginalized youth;
$25,000 for one year to Junior Achievement of Arizona for JA BizTown and JA BizTown Adventures access to low-income Mesa students;
$150,000 for three years — $50,000 per year — to Arizona Burn Foundation for its community smoke alarm program;
$20,000 for one year to Family Promise of Greater Phoenix for its emergency shelter program to provide services to Mesa families; and
•$7,500 for one year to Anthology Inc. to support the Mesa Book Festival.
Richard Dyer Managing Editor | East Valley @RHDyer
Meet Richard Richard Dyer has worked at Independent Newsmedia Inc. USA since 1987, starting his career in Apache Junction as a copy editor and being promoted over the years to work as the editor of the Mesa Independent, news services editor for the East Valley office in Apache Junction, managing editor for the East Valley office, news services editor for the East Valley office and eventually also for the newspapers at INI’s then-Chandler office, managing editor again and as a news editor covering Apache Junction/Gold Canyon and Queen Creek. He helped start the Florence Independent while the news editor covering Apache Junction and Mesa news. In January 2023, he became associate managing editor for the East Valley newspapers and in August 2023 became managing editor for the East Valley newspapers of Chandler/Tempe, Gilbert, Queen Creek, Florence, Mesa and Apache Junction/Gold Canyon, while also reporting on Mesa and Apache Junction/Gold Canyon.
Community: Since 2009, he has worked as a volunteer to design The Blue Guitar Magazine, Blue Guitar Jr. magazine and Unstrung magazine, which are projects of The Arizona Consortium for the Arts; and since 2014, has been overseeing the art submissions.
Education: University of Arizona with a master of arts in journalism and a bachelor of science in agricultural communication. Also continuing education at Mesa Community College in welding in a metal art sculpture class.
Random fact: Saw his first tornado on May 31, 2010, which was classified as an EF-2, as part of a stormchasing tour group.
Hobbies: He is an artist of welded-steel sculptures, selling his artwork at juried and non-juried art shows.
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