Malcolm has given so much, let's give back to him

To all Friends, Colleagues, Admirers, and the Larger Community of Malcolm Margolin,

We are friends of Malcolm working with his family to raise $150,000 so that Malcolm can move to an assisted living facility in Berkeley (and receive help from additional assistants as needed). We're hoping we can do this together to help make this happen.

Visionary author and publisher, Malcolm Margolin wrote the landmark book The Ohlone Way in the mid-1970s, creating widespread interest in Native California history. He launched Heyday Books, which has provided countless stories of California's first peoples, communities of color, and other diverse contributions that celebrate this state’s cultural history and natural beauty. His co-founding of the magazine News from Native California insured that California's almost 200 Indigenous tribes could see their own history, language, cultural, and spiritual practices represented.

After retiring from Heyday in 2016, Malcolm launched the California Institute for Community, Art & Nature, developing a team that organizes educational events and publications about the depth and beauty of California’s arts and Indian cultures.

In the last 20 years, Malcolm has achieved these accomplishments while fighting Parkinson's, the "unwelcome guest" as he calls it. The progressing disease has taken its toll, making it difficult for Malcolm to speak publicly, or even casually. Yet his mind is ever active, and with the assistance of very capable professional writers and organizers, Malcolm has advanced his work in spite of enormous challenges.

However, in March 2023, Malcolm broke a vertebra in a fall, which required prolonged rest and physical therapy to regain his strength in a skilled nursing facility. He is determined to keep working, but as a result of this accident, Malcolm can no longer be cared for at home. He now requires an assisted living facility where he can get the physical support he needs for at least one year.

These funds raised from all of us will provide his daily care and support the different therapists and assistants he will require, enabling Malcolm not only to be safe and healthy but also to continue in the creative life that sustains him—and us in his many communities.

Anyone who knows Malcolm knows how he has freely given his creativity and funds to the world to support others’ books, poetry, art, and environmental and cultural causes. He has enriched our lives in many ways and we have all benefited immensely from his vision, his kindness, his wildness, his love of beauty and his capacity to bring people together.

Now we ask for your help in giving Malcolm the living space and support that he needs.

Malcolm and his family are hoping for a facility near Berkeley where they and friends can spend time with him and support his recovery, and where his California I CAN colleagues and assistants can work with him to move his projects (including two books) to completion over the next 12 months.

This GoFundMe campaign is our turn to step in together to help someone whose 50 years of innovative cultural work helped and enlightened so many others in Native California, in Berkeley, in the Bay Area, across California, and far beyond.

We will keep in touch with you, his community, on how he is progressing.

Thank you, especially from Malcolm’s family and, of course, from Malcolm himself.

With appreciation, together with Reuben Margolin & the Margolin family.

Friends of Malcolm Margolin:

Kim Bancroft, Author, The Heyday of Malcolm Margolin (Heyday 2014)

Jennifer Bates (Northern Sierra Mewuk), Co-Founder, California Indian Basketweavers Association, Curator, California Native Ways Festival

Mary Bisbee-Beek, Literary Publicist, Former Heyday Staff Member

Gregg Castro, (t'rowt'raahl Salinan / Rumsien & Ramaytush Ohlone), Culture Director - Association of Ramaytush Ohlone (ARO)

Claire Greensfelder, Associate Director, California Institute for Community, Art & Nature,

Peace, Environment & Justice Activist

Bob Hass, Former US Poet Laureate, author, Summer Snow, Harper Collins 2021

Michelle Lee Esq. (Pit River), The Circle Law Group, P.C

Linda Maio, Former Berkeley City Council Member

Linda Schacht-Gage, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, Berkeley Public Library Foundation Council

Steve Wasserman, Publisher, Heyday Books

Brooke Williams, author, Mary Jane Wild: Two Walks and a Rant, Homebound 2021 and

Terry Tempest-Williams, Author, Erosion, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019

(partial list)