Indian Peoples of the North American continent were, in the broadest sense, literate before books and other media came into their lives. Native Ammicans have always been gatherers of information, sharers of knowledge, skilled users of symbols, and transmitters of cultural heritage and experience. Like the Greeks, Indian People vested the world with elaborate meanings, told stories of courage and heroism, and passed the wisdom evolved from assimilated knowledge and experience to succeeding generations. -Bureau of Indian Affairs, Plan for the Improvement of Library/Media/Information Programs, 1977 From the mid-1970s to mid-1980s a series of federal grants, born of one woman's vision and determination, set the groundwork for the establishment of tribal libraries across this nation. The fertile political environment of the late 1960s championed initiatives designed to reach underserved populations. While libraries in the dominant culture were establishing outreach departments and finding ways to build bridges to neglected populations, educators Charles Townley and Lotsee Patterson lobbied and applied for federal monies to establish libraries on tribal lands. Townley and Patterson were among the first to take meaningful action toward the development of tribal libraries as Native American communities began to emerge from a totally oral tradition into one that sought to find ways to preserve, transfer, and disseminate cultural traditions through print and new media formats.

On a small reservation in rural San Diego County, tribal elders, progressive administrators, university librarians, and technical advisors have forged a collaborative partnership to preserve the Luiseño cultural heritage. In the 1970s, Luiseño elders and volunteers secured a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to fund a project involving the gathering of secondary information on Luiseño artifacts and information from a variety of museums, libraries, and private collections. Following up on the creation of the Luiseño Culture Bank, university librarians from California State University, San Marcos, are now engaged in a project that eventually will mount this “bank” onto a Hypercard database. The San Luiseño Band of Mission Indians derive their name from their association with Mission San Luis Rey in northern San Diego County. Established in 1798 by Franciscan fathers, Mission San Luis Rey is known as the ”king of the missions.” However, the treatment of the native peoples by Spanish missionaries was anything but royal. Contact between native peoples and Europeans had a devastating effect on the social, cultural, and economic life of the Indians. Within sixty-five years of the arrival of Junipero Serra in 1769, the population of California Indians was reduced by two-thirds as a result of disease, overwork, and capital punishment. Mission Indians under Franciscan control were usually malnourished. They were severely punished if they tried to escape, and the women often were raped. Subsequent periods of domination by Mexico (1821 to 1848) and then by the United States further diminished native populations and compounded cultural displacement.