Funds Approved for Chumash Museum Artifact Acquisitions : Thousand Oaks: The $100,000 allocated by county supervisors will also pay for display cases at the new facility.

With a Chumash museum set to open in Thousand Oaks in mid-December, Ventura County supervisors Tuesday approved $100,000 to acquire artifacts and build display cases inside the recently completed museum in Oakbrook Park.

“I’m really excited, the money will help us finish the project,” said Paul Varela, executive director of the Oakbrook Park Chumash Interpretive Center.

The $1.7-million center, which will include artifacts, a replica of a Chumash village and a pictorial history of local Native American culture, is in the 438-acre county park along the eastern edge of Thousand Oaks.

The park, which has never been opened to the public without a special permit, has numerous rock caves with rare Chumash pictographs and once was the site of a Chumash settlement.

Although local governments have other museums with Chumash artifacts, this will be the first Chumash museum and interpretive center run by descendants of Native Americans.

The Oakbrook Park Chumash Indian Corp. has leased the center from the county for eight years and plans to operate a center aimed at teaching schoolchildren and residents about the indigenous culture.

“We’re not just doing it for Indian people,” said Varela, who traces his ancestry to the Chumash. “This center’s for everyone. We want people to know we were here and we’re still here.”

County officials Tuesday were set to give the nonprofit group another $106,100 to launch the museum and interpretive center during its first 18 months of operation. But they postponed action because of legal concerns.

The problem is that the money comes from a special developer fee for parks, which usually is restricted to building parks and other recreational projects and cannot be used for maintenance or operations, said Blake Boyle, the county’s manager of parks and recreation.

The county council’s office is reviewing the law, he said. And if the developers fees cannot be used, Boyle said the Parks and Recreation Department will look for another source of start-up money.

County officials are committed to opening the park, which the county purchased in 1971 and set aside as an archeologically sensitive wilderness reserve. The park was off-limits to the public, except for the occasional permit given to Boy Scouts or other groups to enter the property, Boyle said.

“The big benefit is going to be for the children,” said Boyle, who expects busloads of schoolchildren to visit the interpretive center beginning next year. “It’ll be a reminder to everyone of our local cultural roots.”

The interpretive center’s semicircular building was completed in August, surrounding an old oak tree that stood alone in a clearing on the parkland. Situated on Lang Ranch Parkway off the northern extension of Westlake Boulevard, the 5,000-square-foot building is divided into sections for a library, gift shop, amphitheater and caretaker’s house, as well as a gallery to display artifacts.

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About 90% of the artifacts will be on loan from the collections held by the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and UC Santa Barbara, Varela said. Artists are working on a five-panel pictorial history of the Chumash before the arrival of Spanish missionaries, and other workers expect to complete a trail for hikers before the December opening.

“We also will build a replica of a working Chumash village, complete with a sweat house and Chumash huts,” said Varela, who left his job with a printed computer-circuit manufacturer in Ventura to oversee the center. He and his family now live in the caretaker’s house on the property.

Varela said his group stitched together a variety of grants to complete the center. And to preserve authenticity, it has sought advice from archeologists.

“I’ve seen the plans and they look great,” said John Johnson, curator of anthropology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. “This is the first culture center that has an almost entirely Native American board.”

Johnson said he has helped several board members trace their family genealogy, and the board has descendants of the Chumash, Tataviam and Gabrielino--the three groups of Native Americans who once lived in Ventura County. Each group had its own language.

He also emphasized the importance of the location of the center. A cave in Oakbrook Park, he said, has one of only three known pictographs of a swordfish, a prominent entity in Chumash mythology. The Chumash believed that the swordfish was the chief of all creatures of the sea--the maritime counterpart to human beings.