Digital divide narrowing according to technology report

By K. Marie Porterfield
Indian Country Today Correspondent

8/1/1999

WASHINGTON, D.C. - On the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona 83.9 percent of the people do not have a phone in their home. For them and residents of many other rural Indian reservations across the U.S., the prospect of surfing the Internet is remote.

Based on 1990 census figures, 53 percent of American households do not have telephones, while only 5 percent of the total U.S. households are without a phone. At the same time that split-second global communication creates previously unimagined educational and economic opportunities for many Americans, a number of American Indians remain without access.

That gap is narrowing according to Native Networking: Telecommunications and Information Technology in Indian Country, a report released by the Benton Foundation in April and posted on the non-profit organization's website this summer. Randy Ross, a Nebraska Ponca and Otoe Missouria; James Casey, a Cherokee and Marcia Warren, a Santa Clara Pueblo authored the report.

The Benton Foundation is a Washington, D.C. non-profit organization that seeks to shape the emerging communications environment and to demonstrate the value of communications for solving social problems.

"Our goal was to do something to help close the digital divide," said Rachel Anderson, a Benton Foundation Associate who worked with the project. "We want to bring all Americans into a place where they can use telecommunications. As technology becomes an integral part of society and the economy we wanted to identify resources and help American Indians get connected to the Internet."

American Indian Computer Use Growing

According to the 64-page report, the use of computers to access the Internet has increased dramatically since four years ago when the congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) commissioned the trailblazing Telecommunications Technology and Native Americans Report.

Currently 76 of the 185 BIA schools are connected to the Department of Interior's Internet Service. Indian Health Service has a closed-network system connecting more than 550 "nodes," so that patient information can be transferred across the country. Over 100 American Indian tribes now have official websites following the lead of the Onieda Nation who posted the first such tribal site on the Internet.

Even so, the distance between cyber haves and have nots will not vanish overnight. The good news is that funding for American Indian computer projects is abundant.

Technology Funding on Increase

"Funding for technology has exploded," said Warren. "We found quite a bit of activity out there as well as funding. What surprised me was how often the two don't meet."

Native Networking lists 20 pages of government, corporate and private donors, all of which have funded telecommunications, technology or networking projects in schools and communities.

"The projects that I knew about were mostly programs that were funded by grants from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration," Warren said. "The people who run them aren't aware of the resources because most of them are doing one two or even three jobs. Seeking out funding sources takes a lot of work.

One of the report's goals was to make the task easier by gathering telecommunications funding into one publication. "There were no such resources out there," she said of the project. We wanted it to be a tool."

Another goal was to briefly profile over 60 past and current American Indian telecommunications projects in order to alert organizations and tribal officials to the possibilities telecommunications can offer American Indians. These projects range from the American Indian Higher Education Consortium Distance Learning Network to the Oglala Sioux Tribe's development of a digital wireless network for home healthcare and the Tribal Connections Project created by the Regional Medical Library at the University of Washington which provides health information to remote tribes and villages in Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington.

Planning Is Key to Grantwriting Success

When tribes approach givers, they need to have a plan, according to Warren. That means narrowing down the field. "The options are overwhelming," she said. "You need to specify what the tribe and the community want."

Connecting with successful programs is essential in order to be able to discover the options, she said. "The important thing is to communicate amount one another. When you see a project that interests you ask how did you do it. Form mentoring relationships. The amount of money available is enormous, so tribes don't have to compete for it.

Warren, who is the deputy directory of global diversity and training at the U.S. Department of Commerce U.S. and foreign Commercial Services Division, believes that this homework is critical. "Technology is sometimes seen as solving big problems instantly and then tribes get into a big rush," she said. Programs have purchased systems and limited their use to word processing.

Hardware Alone Offers No Quick Fixes

"I know of one instance the computers weren't networked properly," she said. "A trainer came in and the training couldn't be done. There was no one available to tangle with the computers and they just sat there." Forming a network of peers can avoid those problems. Native Networking provides a list of American Indian telecommunications organizations that can help as well as a glossary of computer terms to help get started. American Indian owned telecommunications businesses are also listed.

"Computers are a tool in a larger plan, not an end in themselves," Warren cautioned. "People need a personal investment in telecommunications programs. When you dump a program on people they don't care. The projects are more organic than the hardware. You can use computers for language preservation. You can form a virtual community. There are no quick fixes with computers, but at the same time, anything is possible," she said.

Native Networking: Telecommunications and Information Technology in Indian Country that took a year and a half to complete, has proven such a success, it may be the first of many," she said. "We want to do it on an annual basis. We're projecting that the funding resource section will explode."

The print version of the report may be obtained for $12.50 plus shipping and handling by calling the Benton Foundation at 1-877-223-6866 or downloaded from the Web in PDF version from their website at http://www.benton.org/Library/Native/.

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