Patricia 'Tricia' Erikson, Ph.D.
Director of Development and Membership

Tricia’s passion for history and nature started while growing up in rural Maine in an 18th-century home whose walls were stuffed with ancient, shredded newspaper and corn cobs,  and with parents who were avid antique collectors. This fostered a lifelong love for museum collections and uncovering hidden histories.

After majoring in geology at Smith College, she worked at Dartmouth College in the Office of Major Gifts, where she learned best practices in fundraising, and in the Native American program, where she developed a respect for the rich culture and history of tribes. These experiences led Tricia to earn a Master’s Degree in archaeology and a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology and Native American studies at the University of California-Davis. Her doctorate pursued collections research at the Smithsonian Institution as a graduate fellow and field research on the Makah Indian Reservation on the Olympic Peninsula and in the Zapotec pueblo of Shan Dany in Oaxaca. Throughout, she used her skills to mentor students and advance museums’ missions.

At the Washington State History Museum, she managed the effort to bring digitized collections, curriculum, and training workshops to teachers throughout Washington. Tricia went on to introduce strategic advancement strategies to many museums and educational projects, most recently the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine. She loves the process of finding “the match” between what donors would like to accomplish with their generous giving and the impact that the museum would like to make in its community.

Tricia enthusiastically joined the MOR team as Director of Development & Membership in May of 2022.

Contact Patricia via email or 406.994.4973.

SELECT PUBLICATIONS

Erikson, Patricia with Helma Ward and Kirk Wachendorf (2001) Voices of a Thousand People: The Makah Cultural and Research Center. University of Nebraska Press, 264 pages.

Bowechop, Janine and Erikson, Patricia (2005) Forging Indigenous Methodologies on Cape Flattery: The Makah Museum as a Center of Collaborative Research. American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 1/2 (Winter-Spring, 2005), pp. 263-273

Erikson, Patricia (2008) Decolonizing the Nation’s Attic: The National Museum of the American Indian and the Politics of Knowledge-Making in a National Space in The National Museum of the American Indian: Critical Conversations, eds. Amy Lonetree and Amanda J. Cobb-Greetham (University of Nebraska Press), 43-83.

Erikson, Patricia (2009) Josephine Diebitsch Peary (1863-1955). ARCTIC 62 (1) March: 1–118.

Erikson, Patricia (2013) Homemaking, Snowbabies, and the Search for the North Pole: Josephine Diebitsch Peary and the Making of National History in North by Degree: New Perspectives on Arctic Exploration, eds. Susan A. Kaplan and Robert McCracken Peck (Lightning Rod Press) vol. 8. Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society, pp. 254-285.

Erikson, Patricia (2014) A Streetcar Named Narcissus. Portland Magazine, Summerguide: 179-182.

Erikson, Patricia (2018) Timberwind Comes Home. Portland Magazine, July/August: 103-107.