Suquamish Museum
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| Established | 1983 |
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| Location | 6861 NE South St, Suquamish, Washington |
| Coordinates | 47°43′46″N 122°33′27″W / 47.729493°N 122.557378°W |
| Type | Tribal Museum |
| Key holdings | Old Man House artifacts, Baba'kwob site artifacts |
| Director | Janet Smoak |
| President | Robin Sigo |
| Curator | Lydia Sigo |
| Owner | Suquamish Tribe |
| Website | suquamishmuseum |
The Suquamish Museum is a museum located on the Port Madison Indian Reservation in Washington state. It preserves and displays relics and records related to the Suquamish Tribe, including artifacts from the Old Man House and the Baba'kwob site. Founded in 1983, the museum currently occupies a facility opened in 2012.
The Suquamish Museum opened in 1983 as the Suquamish Museum and Cultural Center, then only the second tribal museum in the state of Washington. In 2009 the Suquamish tribe launched a capital campaign to construct a new facility, enlisting Senator Patty Murray and former Washington Secretary of State Ralph Munro to help lead the effort. The new facility opened in 2012 and is triple the size of the original building. Constructed at a cost of $6 million, the 9,000-square-foot (840 m2) purpose-built structure is set in a small botanical garden on the Port Madison Indian Reservation and consists of two galleries, a gift shop, a 50-seat auditorium, and a climate-controlled storage room used to house artifacts not on display. The facility was designed by the Seattle architectural firm Mithun and is a LEED Gold certified building. In 2013 it received a citation from the Washington Council of the American Institute of Architects.
In addition to a large repository of photographs documenting tribal life from the 1860s to the present, the museum's collection includes 496 archaeological artifacts recovered from the site of the former Old Man House, a massive, 240 meters (790 ft) long longhouse that served as the Suquamish capitol until its destruction in the late nineteenth century. Originally in the custody of the Burke Museum at the University of Washington, the artifacts, which include harpoon points, smoking pipes, and jewelry, were transferred to the Suquamish tribe in 2013. In 2014, the Port of Seattle transferred additional artifacts to the museum, including crockery and glass bottles, discovered during archaeological excavations in the 1970s at the Baba'kwob site, a pre-contact village located in what is now Seattle's Belltown neighborhood. The controversial transfer was contested by the Duwamish, an unrecognized tribe and historic Suquamish rival who claim ownership of the artifacts.
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