Agua Caliente Cultural Plaza tells story in tribe’s own words
About 12,000 feet beneath the surface of our valley lies an ancient, underground aquifer filled with water that serves as the heart and soul of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians.
The Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians put the “springs” in Palm Springs. Literally.
The water is symbolic not only because of its use by hundreds of generations of tribal members – but also because the Agua Caliente tribe won the federally granted “reserved right” to the groundwater in a 2017 Supreme Court Appeal.
Today, if you stand on the corner of Indian Canyon Drive and Tahquitz Canyon Way, the site of the new Agua Caliente Cultural Museum and Spa at Séc-he – you are indeed standing atop the original springs which continue to bubble deep below the surface.
Last week, The Desert Sun Editorial Board toured both the museum and spa.
Who is on our board, you might wonder? We’re a group of seven members, including Executive Editor Kate Franco, opinion editor Nicky Loomis, and five other members who are not part of the newsroom but rather, who are local leaders who serve in an advisory capacity to The Desert Sun. This group meets weekly to discuss matters affecting the Coachella Valley that then become our weekly editorial.
Five members of our board had the privilege of touring the new museum and spa with Agua Caliente’s Chairman Reid Milanovich, along with the tribe’s Council, including Vice Chairman Candace Patencio Anderson, Secretary-Treasurer Savana R. Saubel, Tribal Council member John R. Preckwinkle III and Tribal Council Member Virginia Siva-Gillespie – and Tribe Director of Public Relations, Kate Anderson.
A quick sketch: The museum opened to the public Nov. 3 and is over 48,000 square feet; the rounded architecture of the building evokes imagery of a basket, which is another component vital to the Cahuilla people.
The museum’s five main rooms include “Our Home,” “Creation and Migration,” which tells the Tribe’s creation story in 360-degree animation, “Our Land,” “Change, Adaptation, Self-Determination” and “Into the Future” – which displays artifacts that were discovered in the during excavations for the Agua Caliente Cultural Plaza.
The museum is built to show a living culture. It’s not stagnant or sterile. Rather, you get to experience people in contemporary times – people you might run into on the street. It’s also a particularly advanced facility as it creates an experience not just for the ablebodied – there seems to be a sensory experience for everybody.
After spending a few hours with the tribal council at both the museum and spa, we each seemed to be left with our own personal sense of awe in the experience.
As we exited the museum, a couple of us took note of one of the expressions of the tribe, “Go in a good way.”
Just outside the museum, you can meander along the Oasis Trail, a permanent outdoor exhibition that includes native plants, rock formations and water features inspired by those found in the Agua Caliente Indian Canyons and Tahquitz Canyon — both of which make up part of the tribe’s ancestral lands.
Spa Séc-he sits beside the museum at over 70,000 square feet – it’s the fifth bathhouse or spa at the site, with the first one operating in the late 1880s.
You can see black-and-white photos of the original bathhouse which became a main tourist attraction to the area before the tribe’s land was stolen in the 19th century.
That this history – both in its beauty and horrors – has transpired and that these landmarks now stand is a deeply symbolic testament to the Agua Caliente Tribe’s 500 plus members.
Part of the tribe’s history is a “story about land theft, deceit, genocide, tenacity, perseverance, and the fight for basic human rights. California is stolen land,” as Sean Milanovich writes in his PhD thesis, “The Treaty of Temecula: A Story of Invasion, Deceit, Stolen Land, and the Persistence of Power, 18461905.”
On Jan. 5, 1852, Indigenous leaders of the Cahuilla, Cupeño, Luiseño, and Serrano attached their marks to the Treaty of Temecula, surrendering their land base under duress and establishing a small permanent reservation.
“The American invaders claimed the Indigenous land as their own and established a foreign government and subjugated the Indigenous peoples to a foreign law, American law. The Americans held the Indigenous peoples in a peon state of war and did not acknowledge their right to own land,” as Milanovich describes.
With the cultural nuseum, the tribe tells their story – in their own words. Downtown Palm Springs is a truer and therefore better version of itself thanks to the addition of the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum.
The beauty is that the space will no doubt stand the test of time – same as the tribe has – and with a version of its history told from its people’s point of view.
And the story of the Agua Caliente tribe is one of triumph rather than tragedy.