When towns in New Mexico investigated the possibility of installing fiber at Jemez Day School, a K-6 school run by the Bureau of Indian Education, they were launching a complicated process.
Improving the school connection meant overcoming obstacles, even though there was fiber across the street. Early on, the U.S. federal government's E-Rate program, which provides “universal service” funding to schools and libraries for telecommunications and the Internet, also said it would not pay for another project. The program didn't want to spend to bring fiber down the same path to tribal schools and libraries and the local school district, says John Chadwick, digital equity coordinator for the New Mexico Department of Education.
Then Chadwick relayed what he had been told: If towns were eager to provide Internet to their students, they would have to partner with the local public school district. But some town leaders opposed this idea, according to Chadwick. “I thought I had taken a big step forward,” he says. Some leaders of the towns of Santo Domingo, San Felipe and Cochití saw it as a new usurpation of their rights to self-government.
However, for Chadwick, this was clearly a situation where he needed to step aside. The negotiation would have to take place between the towns – which are sovereign nations – and the districts. Until a former governor of Santo Domingo stepped in to argue in favor of the idea, it looked like it wasn't going to happen. But in that leader's view, it was the tribe's obligation to bring the Internet to its students, even if it meant working with the district.
This began a three-year process to try to connect the school. But it came at the right time and the school successfully upgraded to a 100 megabits per second (Mbps) fiber connection right at the start of the pandemic. Slower speeds are considered “neglected” in federal infrastructure legislation.
Broadband – tech.ed.gov/wireless-brief/introduction/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener nofollow”>Internet of high speed – is essential for learning. Without it, students may have difficulty submitting or even accessing schoolwork. and the pandemic focused attention on unequal access to broadband services in education. While for some students and public schools that is largely due to affordability For people and schools in rural areas, these problems are also due to inadequate Internet infrastructure.
This is especially a problem on tribal lands. In 2020, according to one federal estimate, 18 percent of people living on tribal lands could not to access broadband (Outside tribal areas, that number was closer to 4 percent.) In rural tribal areas, about 30 percent of people could not access broadband. Federal reports blame, among other challenges, fragmented bureaucratic processes and lack of funds to cover initial costs.
The upshot is that whether Native American students have enough Internet for modern learning depends on where they live.
While most Native American students attend school through the public education system, those who attend schools controlled by tribal governments or the Bureau of Indian Education may have less access to the Internet at school or at home, due to the terrain where it is difficult to lay fiber. , community poverty and historical land ownership patterns that create obstacles.
The situation differs drastically from place to place, from tribe to tribe, and even within tribal chapters. So how are some of them handling it?
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
In South Dakota, some members of the Oglala Sioux found it difficult to acquire broadband.
There are nine federally recognized tribes in the state and the Oglala Sioux are one of the largest. The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is rural and large, spread over land roughly the size of Connecticut. About 19,000 people live there, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Therefore, the cost of operating broadband across the reservation is high, says Nakina Mills, a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in Pine Ridge.
Mills was elected tribal officer during the COVID-19 crisis. In his current job, he works as a tribal education specialist for the National Indian Education Association, a national nonprofit organization focused on Native American education. Typically, he spends his time trying to support the “educational sovereignty” of the tribes that run the schools, working on policy or programming. That's why she wasn't used to working on broadband, he says.
During the pandemic, students at Pine Ridge's 23 K-12 schools relied on hot spots. With students out of school, test scores dropped, Mills says. So with minimal Internet, students still performed worse academically. But the pandemic provided a compelling example of why broadband is a worthwhile investment.
That wasn't always obvious, he says.
The reservation has a high poverty rate, affecting about 70 percent of area students, Mills estimates. When there is so much poverty, people must sacrifice to cover basic needs like housing, food and electricity, Mills says. As a result, Wi-Fi and broadband have been given less priority. That's why, at home, having the Internet remains a challenge for many families, Mill says.
Bringing broadband to the region means seeking federal funds. But tribal leaders are sometimes cautious about doing that: “Making sure there's true intent to help build our infrastructure” is important, Mills says, “just because of the historical trauma and the federal government and those kinds of things that They have happened to our people. “
Recently, there has been federal investment. For example, a $35 million federal grant, announced in March, is providing funding for fiber in Bennett and Oglala Lakota counties, where the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is located. The funding is intended to help connect seven educational facilities, along with 3,300 people and a number of businesses and farms, according to a release from the US Department of Agriculture.
Ramah Navajo Indian Reservation
When the pandemic hit, most students at Pine Hill School, a tribal school on the Ramah Navajo Indian Reservation, did not have internet access at home.
With forced closures, the school needed to increase internet access, for which it had received funding from the CARES Act. The leaders called Margaret Merrill, a former teacher and owner of Oso Internet Solutions, an Internet service provider for the Ramah Navajo Chapter in New Mexico, part of the Navajo Nation.
Merrill felt he had to act quickly. Working closely with the tribal government and the community, his company installed access points to allow K-12 students and students returning home from college the opportunity to complete their assignments.
It was an immense challenge that required creativity, Merrill says. The landscape itself makes Internet access difficult. This region, the High Desert, is marked by canyons, mesas and mountains. A volcanic crater rises above the reserve.
It wasn't just for school purposes either. Merrill says he committed to building the infrastructure in part because he knew the community was losing seniors. School staff and elders also live in the southernmost parts of the reservation, sometimes in multi-sided hogans, sacred dwellings in the Diné culture (which in some cases, Merrill says, are built to resemble fingers of a woman clasped with her hands on her pregnant belly). In recent years, the community has invested in Indian Health Service projects to bring water and electricity to those areas. Still, just a couple of years ago they were in a real dead zone, Merrill says. Without Internet. There is no cell phone signal. There is no way to notify if an emergency occurs.
But the company successfully brought fiber optics to Pine Hill School, a health clinic and tribal government buildings. In 2022, thanks to the FCC's emergency connectivity fund, they were able to start bringing it to homes. Those funds are limited only to schools, so the company paid out of pocket to bring fiber to the homes of 26 seniors, taking advantage of the fiber they had run out to connect the school, Merrill adds.
Within about five months, almost everyone had access to the Internet, Merrill says. Chadwick, with the New Mexico Department of Education, pointed to Pine Hill School as one of the only schools in the entire country to apply for and receive emergency connectivity funds for fiber.
However, there were some families who still could not connect to the Internet. Some did not have electricity in their homes. The terrain means they rely on radio signals for the Internet, and there was one family who lived so remotely on the other side of the volcanic crater that the signals couldn't reach them, Merrill says.
For Merrill, fixing this is part of a fierce vision of digital equity that is not complete, one that is deeply connected to a sense of community. Anyone should be able to return home and continue working and learning, she says.
Now, the company is working on a project across the Navajo Nation, relying on American Rescue Plan Act funding, that will connect another 600 Ramah Navajo family homes to fiber. By the time construction is completed in 2025, about 85 percent of families will be connected, Merrill estimates.
This will allow them to work on other components of digital equity, such as education on how to use digital tools, he adds. Merrill hopes the investments will spur new attempts to duplicate his efforts. Unemployment is high and many people reside on the reservation only on weekends and find work in large metropolitan areas such as Albuquerque or Phoenix. Better internet connectivity could lead to better economic development, allowing people who have expressed interest in returning to the reservation system to work remotely and attend telehealth appointments, she maintains.
Foresight 20/20
Ultimately, the process to improve broadband can be slow.
For example, Tse Yi Gai High School in New Mexico began the process of connecting to the Internet five years ago and is just getting started this summer, says Chadwick of the New Mexico Department of Education.
There is a “checkerboard” to deal with, the result of a historical process that divided native land grants, mixing private and tribal ownership. Today, that means bringing fiber to a region can involve crossing lands owned by the federal government, state governments, tribal governments and private landowners. It complicates the permitting process, Chadwick says.
There are barriers for those building broadband infrastructure for tribes, and ensuring tribal students can connect to the internet may require advocates who can help overcome obstacles like cost and availability, Chadwick says.
“You need champions who really recognize that this is a valuable tool for their future,” Chadwick says, adding, “If there's a will to do it, there's a way to make it happen. “It takes a lot of efficiency and a lot of patience.”
