Volume 2, Number 3 - March/April 1999

A museum might not be the most obvious partner for a traffic safety coalition. But the Yakama Nation Museum, located in Washington State, demonstrated that a museum can not only preserve the heritage of a people, but also preserve its future by protecting its members from traffic injuries.

In response to a traffic fatality rate three times that of neighboring counties, a coalition in Yakima County, including law enforcement agencies, emergency medical services, and highway en-gineers, began a campaign to improve rumble strips, highway signage, and traffic law enforcement.

As part of this effort, Marilyn Skahan-Malatare and Pam Fabela, the curator and manager, respectively, of the Yakama Nation Museum, and Jonna VanDyk of the Washington Traffic Safety Commission, with the en-thusiastic support of the museum's Elders Advisory Council, approached the Tribal Council about conducting a traffic safety educational campaign. Skahan-Malatare says that the Council's support of the campaign sprung from "a desire to protect our people, especially our young people." The three women and their collaborators combined traditional tribal sayings and archival photographs from the museum's collection with a contemporary "buckle up" message to create culturally sensitive educational materials. The campaign proved to be effective, and seat belt use on the reservation increased by 25 percent during 1998.

VanDyk, Fabela, and Skahan-Malatare also created a short video on the history of cradleboards, which is used as a springboard to educate tribal members about child occupant protection. Cradleboards: A Tradition of Safety and Security won a silver medal at the 1998 Worldfest International Film Festival.

Skahan-Malatare believes that the strategies used in their efforts can work for other tribes, as well as non-Indian cultural groups. She explained that the program was careful "to respect the elders and the values and culture of the tribe. We explained what we were doing every step of the way and were careful not to impinge on the sovereignty of the Nation."

For more information about the Yakama Nation video and poster campaign, contact the Yakama Nation Museum, P.O. Box 151, Toppenish, WA 98948.

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