September 20, 2007

For librarian, work with tribes was about much more than books

Retired university employee was a liaison for reservations
By Onell R. Soto
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

SAN MARCOS – An urgent plea from a professor changed Bonnie Biggs' life.

Biggs, a librarian, had just started working at what would later become California State University San Marcos when David Whitehorse came in.

“The tribal libraries are going to be closing because of lack of funding,” Biggs recalled him telling her. “What can you do about it?”

What she did revived libraries at Indian reservations across Southern California and led her to become a link between young tribal members and college.

Twenty years later, Biggs, 56, has retired from the university, and the people she worked with in Indian country say she will be missed.

“She encouraged us to keep our libraries open, enlarge our collections,” said Patricia Dixon, a Pauma tribal member.

Biggs, who lives in Carlsbad, also helped tribal leaders understand that “libraries aren't just about books anymore,” said Dixon, a professor who heads the American Indian studies and American studies programs at Palomar College.

Biggs followed up her work on libraries with three years as the university's tribal liaison.

“She's kind of making the opportunities happen between Cal State San Marcos and the tribes right now,” said Tishmall Turner, who works with the Southern California Tribal Chairmen's Association.

Tribal governments are flourishing with income from casinos and other ventures, Turner said.

“We're really trying to promote our own tribal members and sometimes the education level is not there,” she said.

Biggs worked for 13 years for the county library system and in 1986 began working at San Diego State North County. The satellite campus, which was known affectionately to some as Cal State Jerome's because it operated in a remodeled furniture store, led to the establishment of Cal State San Marcos.

When Whitehorse, a Lakota Indian, came to her, the two set out to discover what was happening on the reservations – with 18, San Diego County has more than any other county in the country.

“The needs were just absolutely overwhelming,” Biggs said. “You had bookshelves with books with no sort of cataloging organization.”

She recalls walking into the Rincon library, in a museumlike room in the old tribal hall.

“It was a collection of mostly outdated materials, but in the midst of that chaos was something called the Luiseño Culture Bank,” she said.

“It was this absolute treasure trove of cultural material gathered by Rincon elders in the 1970s – slides, photographs and documents about their culture.”

The discovery pointed out the role that libraries play in bringing generations together and as a focal point on the reservations.

She helped the tribe find money to preserve those cultural artifacts, and she tried similar efforts elsewhere.

Some were successful, some not so much – “It's different at every reservation,” she said – but Biggs had an epiphany.

“I can't do it all for everybody,” she said.

So she helped place library-science students from Cal State Fullerton into internships in the tribal libraries.

She also conducted a census of tribal libraries in Southern California for the California State Library, which then helped get basic reference books to the reservations and conduct training for workers.

Biggs said she was following the model of Lotsee Patterson, a University of Oklahoma professor who worked in New Mexico reservations in the 1970s.

“I never encountered a tribe that didn't want a library on their reservation,” Patterson said. “The problem was always: 'How do we do it?' Bonnie gave those tribes how-you-do-it and encouragement and advice.”

She said Biggs' approach was the key to her success.

“She's smart. She's good. She knows the library world. She has the right approach with the tribal people,” said Patterson, a member of the Comanche tribe.

Biggs also brought Indian culture into the university, inviting story tellers and hosting local tribal leaders.

“The mission of this university includes knowing about many different cultures,” said Marion Reid, dean of Cal State San Marcos' library.

Biggs has left academia behind since her July 1 retirement, but not instruction.

“Now I'm working with dogs,” she said. Starting with her own dog, Koshi, she said she wants to train canines to comfort people who are sick.