The Board of Directors of the California Indian Museum and Cultural Center are sponsoring three awards to be given at this year's 11th Annual For All My Relations: Conference For Indian Families, July 15th in Garden Grove, California. The awards include: the Cultural Guardian Award, The Emerging Leader Award and the Leadership in Action Award. Past award recipients include the following:

The Cultural Guardian Award - Ernest Silva, Dorothy Ramon Learning Center; Julia Parker, Pomo/Miwok

The Emerging Leader Award - Chairman James Ramos, The San Manuel Band of Mission Indians; Chairman Robert Salgado, Soboba Band of Luiseno Indians

The Leadership in Action Award - William Madrigal, Jr., Cahuilla; Rebecca Muno, Luiseno

Nominations are currently being accepted for the following:

Among California Indians, none have figured more prominently in the public eye than Ishi. When Ishi arrived out of the foothills of Northern California into the town of Oroville in 1911, he was mistakenly characterized as a “wild” and “primitive” Indian, the “last of a Stone Age tribe”.  These assumptions caused him to be brought to the University of California, Museum of Anthropology in San Francisco as a research subject by anthropologist, Alfred Kroeber.  Ishi remained at the museum and shared cultural and historical information with scientists and the public during his five-year residence.  He passed away in 1916 after having contracted tuberculosis while in San Francisco.  Despite his close friendship with Kroeber and other University luminaries, at death, his remains were subjected to the indignity of an autopsy.  His brain was removed in the interests of science.  It disappeared for 83 years and resurfaced in a glass jar on a Smithsonian Institute shelf in 1999 after Ishi’s tribal relations mounted a successful effort to repatriate his remains under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.