Donate in Memory of Doug Fryday
Douglas “Doug” Fryday
Board Member Emeritus, Museum of the American Indian
Doug Fryday’s connection to the Museum of the American Indian extended far beyond his years of service on its Board of Directors. He felt a profound kinship with this place—the Museum, Miwok Park, and the land itself. Doug understood and respected that this is the ancestral homeland of the Coast Miwok people, and his relationship with the Museum was grounded in that understanding of place, history, and the people whose connection to this land reaches back thousands of years. That sense of place remained deeply meaningful to him throughout his life.
That connection shaped the way Doug served the Museum. As a longtime Board member and former Board Chair, he was a passionate champion of educational programming and the experiences the Museum created for students, families, and the wider community. He understood that the Museum comes alive when people gather here to learn, share, and experience culture together. Doug supported the Museum’s school field trips and educational programs, played an instrumental role in its 50th Anniversary celebration, and helped spearhead Trade Feast, strengthening traditions of community gathering, learning, and cultural exchange that remain important to the Museum today.
Among Doug’s most enduring contributions was his role in helping transform the Museum’s governance. Doug believed deeply in Indigenous self-determination and understood that a museum dedicated to Indigenous peoples should be shaped and led by Indigenous voices. He helped guide the Museum’s transition from an all non-Native Board to one with Indigenous representation and, importantly, Indigenous leadership.
In doing so, Doug demonstrated what meaningful allyship can look like in practice: listening, building relationships, using one’s influence to create space for others, and understanding when leadership should be passed forward.
Carrying Doug’s Legacy Forward
It is especially fitting that Doug’s family has chosen to honor his memory through support of the Museum’s yomiko – Living Traditions Outdoor Classroom project.
yomiko will transform the Museum’s existing Kotcha Replica Village into a fully realized Indigenous cultural village and land-based learning environment rooted in Coast Miwok and North Bay traditions. Envisioned as a living cultural space, yomiko will be a place where Indigenous knowledge is practiced, shared, and carried forward through hands-on learning, cultural interpretation, school field trips, community programming, and the work of Indigenous Culture Bearers and Museum educators.
Memorial gifts made in Doug’s honor will support the yomiko – Living Traditions Outdoor Classroom project in its entirety, helping create both the cultural infrastructure and the programming necessary to make yomiko an active, teaching-ready space. Project priorities include new interpretive woven perimeter fencing; restoration of the tule kotcha; educational staff and docent support for field trips and public programming; honoraria for Indigenous Culture Bearers; The Way of Knowing workshops; tule canoe construction; and a culturally informed and purpose-built Native arts demonstration table where artists and Culture Bearers can share traditional and contemporary practices directly with students and visitors.
Together, these elements will create something more than an outdoor exhibit. They will create a place where Indigenous knowledge can be experienced through relationship—with the land, with Culture Bearers, with educators, and with one another—and where traditions can be practiced, demonstrated, taught, and carried forward.
Should individual project priorities be funded in whole or in part through other sources, memorial gifts may be directed to other needs within the yomiko – Living Traditions Outdoor Classroom project, including ongoing exhibit maintenance, habitat restoration, and upkeep, allowing each gift made in Doug’s memory to continue advancing the project as a whole.
In many ways, yomiko brings together the things Doug valued most about the Museum: his profound connection to Coast Miwok ancestral land, his belief in Indigenous leadership and self-determination, his commitment to education and programming, and his love for bringing people together in community. It creates a place where those values can continue to be lived rather than simply remembered. Through yomiko, Doug’s legacy remains connected to the place that meant so much to him—in the land he felt called to, in the Indigenous leadership he helped make space for, in the community he helped gather, and in the generations of children and visitors who will come here to learn.
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We invite you to honor Doug’s memory with a gift to the yomiko – Living Traditions Outdoor Classroom and help carry forward a legacy of place, learning, community, and Indigenous self-determination.
