Out of Isolation and Onto the Internet by the Year 2000
By the year 2000, can Havasupai and Rocky Ridge not only have
computers, but be hooked up to the Internet? What about 183 other
Bureau of Indian Affairs schools, serving more than 51,000 American
Indian children, across 23 states on 63 reservations in the most
isolated communities in America?
Federal workers taking part in Access Native America, one of Vice
President Gore's 340 reinvention labs, think so. In fact, it's it's
already happening. "Its all coming together, just as we envisioned,"
said William J. Mehojah, Deputy Director of the Bureau of Indian
Affairs, Office of Indian Education Programs (OIEP).
The goal is ambitious: Internet access in all 185 BIA-financed schools
by the year 2000. Complications abound. Some school buildings are
historic sites as much as 100 years old, situated within the confines
of old calvary forts such as Ft. Apache in Arizona. Some schools have
inadequate electricity. Few utility lines reach deep into Indian
Country. Indeed, across Indian Country only 47% of households have
telephone service according to the 1990 census.
It Started with a Technology Innovation Challenge Fund Grant The idea
behind the Reinvention Laboratory began less than two years ago. A
group of BIA-funded schools, with OIEP's help, received a Technology
Innovation Challenge Fund from the U.S. Department of Education. The
grant funded the 4Directions Project, which focuses on integrating
both the Native American culture and technology into the children's
education. Thus students maintain and learn their heritage, while
gaining the technical tools to take full advantage of their future.
The tie to tradition is just as important as the technology. New York
Times writer Pamela Mendels reported reactions of school
administrators in a Cybertimes column on May 6, 1998. Mendels talked
with Sherry S. Tubby, principal of Red Water School, a
kindergarten-to-eighth-grade school of about 100 students in Carthage,
Mississippi. According to Mendels, Tubby said her students sometimes
feel ill at ease in the larger community because for many students,
Choctaw, not English, is their first language. The Internet, she said,
will enable her students to communicate with other Native American
children who also speak an indigenous tongue. "We want to let our kids
know of other kids just like them all over the United States."
Project schools are widely dispersed between La Push, Washington, on
the tip of the Olympic Peninsula and Indian Island, in far eastern
Maine. The Laguna Department of Education, 50 miles outside of
Albuquerque, leads the project. The project's immediate need was
assistance to connect to the Internet so that schools in the project
could collaborate on curriculum development.
President Clinton: Connect Every School and Library to the Internet by
the Year 2000
In a fortuitous turn of events, President Clinton in his January of
1997 State of the Union Address challenged America to connect every
classroom and library the Internet by the year 2000. OIEP, which
operates one of two Federal school systems under Federal jurisdiction
(the other being the Department of Defense Education Activity), was
determined to meet the President's challenge.
OIEP employees approached colleagues in the Department of the Interior
for assistance. Interior's Office of Information Resources Management
and OIEP developed a partnership. OIEP got a Class B license to
develop its own domain name system (EDNET) within the Department of
Interior backbone system. Through this arrangement, all schools within
the BIA system could be connected. Interior's Wide-Area-Network
manager, Bobby Swain, and USGS's circuit expert, Tim Lee, soon joined
the effort.
Other Departmental partners caught OIEP's vision of bringing 21st
Century technology to BIA schools. The department had never undertaken
a project of this magnitude. The timeline was short and the
bureaucratic hurdles were great. OIEP Director Joann Sebastian Morris
decided that the (then) National Performance Review Reinvention
Laboratory approach would help reach the goal. Interior Secretary
Bruce Babbitt and Ms. Morris chartered the Access Native America
Reinvention Laboratory in April of 1997.
Immediately a Project Team, consisting of OIEP employees, school and
tribal representatives, came together to begin strategizing and
planning. An infrastructure team also went to work to develop the
implementation plan. The first school to be connected, Tiospa Zina
Tribal School, in Agency Village, SD, came on-line shortly
thereafter. Things moved quickly. In October of 1997, an Access Native
America Technology Conference took place at the Chief Leschi School in
Puyallup, Washington, to expose school leaders to cutting edge
applications of technology in school settings.
Access Native America NetDay Was a Day to Celebrate
One burst of energy, Access Native America NetDay, began in January
1998 and culminated in a celebration on May 16. Project partners wired
and connected 28 schools in 107 days. During that same time,
contractors under the watchful eyes of OIEP employees, Jim Roubidoux
and Jim Issues, bid, competed, and completed the cabling of schools on
the Navajo Nation of Arizona, the Pine Ridge Reservation of South
Dakota, the Choctaw Reservation in Mississippi, and various pueblos in
New Mexico.
On NetDay the schools were provided T-1 access and participated in
joint activities, such as on-line chats, and web page
sharing. Assistant Secretary - Indian Affairs, Kevin Gover, attended
the event at Jemez Day School in the Jemez Pueblo of New Mexico. Other
officials from the Office of Indian Education Programs and the
U.S. Department of Education joined tribal leaders at four featured
sites. Vice President Gore sent his best wishes in an online message.
For the Access Native America Net Day, OIEP's Peter Camp worked with
partners from the University Texas and the University of Kansas to
provide some on the ground assistance and training to teachers at the
school level. In a short period of time, teachers learned to develop
web pages so that Net Day schools could display information about
their schools.
The issue of further teacher training looms large for the lab. Most
BIA teachers have not had any comprehensive computer training. Few
teachers at the schools have the skills needed to make full use of the
Internet. Colleges are just beginning to provide classes to students
teachers in the integration of technology into instruction. The
Reinvention Laboratory will meet in October to develop recommendations
for a systemwide training initiative.
Getting Results Native Amricans Care About
At this time, 108 of the 185 schools have been wired to the classroom
level and 46 schools have actually been connected to EDNET. There
remain numerous challenges to achieve full connectivity by the year
2000, not the least of which is the acquisition of circuits in these
remote areas of the country. Lines are not always available. The lab
is exploring other opportunities for connectivity, such as wireless
and satellite.
Lab Leader Rodney Young is optimistic that the job can be done. He
says, "The vision of connecting American Indian schools to the
Internet is so exciting, it's hard not to get involved. You can't help
yourself."
For More Information
For more information, contact Thomas W. Sweeney at (202) 219-4150.
Related Resources
Vice President Gore's E-Mail Message on Net Day
Bureau of Indian Affairs News Release
Developing Virtual Museums in Native American Schools: The 4Directions Project
Bureau of Indian Affairs, Office of Indian Education Programs
Department of Education, Office of Educational Technology
National Partnership for Reinventing Government Reinvention Labs
October 2, 1998 - Havasupai Day School sits at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, pretty
well isolated from the rest of the world. Rocky Ridge Day School, deep
in the interior of the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, is so remote it
can only receive radio telephone service. Many of the Native American
children who go to these schools have no electricity in their
homes. Their schools have electricity, but they certainly have no
computers.