Why she matters
The oldest story in this valley belongs to the people whose ancestors dug its first canals, and for most of the twentieth century other people told it. Alfretta Antone changed that for the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community. As the Community’s Vice-President in the 1980s, she toured museums on other reservations, came home convinced that hers needed one, and kept at the Council until it happened.
The result, the Huhugam Ki Museum, opened in 1987. Its name means “House of the Ancestors,” and it keeps baskets, pots and photographs that had been scattered through family homes under one roof, with the Community narrating its own past.
Where to find her mark today
The museum. Huhugam Ki Museum at 10005 E. Osborn Road is free and open weekdays, with Akimel O’odham basketry, Piipaash pottery and an Olas Ki round house on the grounds.
Before you go
The museum sits a few minutes from the Talking Stick and Salt River corridor and about fifteen minutes from Old Town. It keeps weekday hours only and closes for exhibit changes each fall, so call ahead. For the deep history the museum carries forward, read the Hohokam canal builders profile and the ancient desert era.
The full story
The documented record of Alfretta Antone’s life is short, and it is best told plainly. She served as Vice-President of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, home to the Akimel O’odham and Piipaash peoples, whose reservation was set by executive order in 1879 after a far larger reserve was cut down.
In the 1980s she visited museums on other reservations and concluded that her Community should have its own, one where its history would be told by the people who lived it rather than appearing as a paragraph in someone else’s account. When a Community Youth Home building came free, she pressed the Council for it and, by her family’s account, did the legwork herself, treating it as a mission.
The Huhugam Ki Museum opened in 1987, finished in adobe and desert plant materials. It has stayed what she meant it to be: a small, free museum run by the Community, a short drive from resort Scottsdale and almost unknown to its visitors.