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                                                               3 August 1993


                     PUBLIC ACCESS TO THE INTERNET:  
                 AMERICAN INDIAN AND ALASKAN NATIVE ISSUES

                                    by
                           Dr. George D. Baldwin
                        Henderson State University

   

     This paper is a historical and sociological discussion about emerging
computer-mediated communication networks (CMC) used by Indian people and
tribal organizations.  Throughout the work social policy implications related
to Indian access to the INTERNET and the public network information resources
located within it.  The writer asks your indulgence as he presents a thumbnail 
history of the role of communication technologies (film, radio, press,
television and telephone) in the evolution of modern American Indian or
Alaskan Native societies.  By consulting this historical perspective readers
may better understand the attitudes of Native people toward the emerging
national information superhighway and what this means for the survival of
tribal cultures in the future.

Communication Technology and Indian Culture
     At the time of the European invasion, a system of communication existed
among the Native people of the Americas.  In North America intertribal
communication was based on the spoken word or sign language and was
transmitted by Indian runners.  These Tribal Messengers functioned to carry
news between tribes.  
     In Central and South America communication systems existed for the
advanced civilizations that prospered there.  These networks included data
encoded symbolically by various means.  Delivered by runners over well
engineered roadways, the "moccasin telegraph" was a highly developed
communication network. The networks of the past were far more complex than
the smoke signals portrayed in Hollywood movies!  
     Tribal networks were augmented in speed and range by the adoption of a
radical new transportation technology called "the  horse". With the deployment
of the horse the moccasin telegraph was extended in speed and distance,  but
communication was still primarily word-of-mouth.  White expansionism, the
Indian Wars, and the advent of the reservation system took their toll. 
Restricted movement and rural isolation effectively limited the communication
that Indians received about themselves as well as the information they
received about dominant society.
     As the 1800's progressed, there was an acceleration in the distribution of
text-based communications within the dominant European culture.  Sources of
media- generally newspapers- competed for specialized information markets
and helped to create what we now recognize as a growing "culture of informa-
tion".  The lack of text-based information on reservations (i.e. newspapers and
libraries) combined synergistically with the low literacy level of Indian people
to create a society of information poverty.  This form of poverty contributed
to the tribes'  long-term dependency on the Bureau of Indian Affairs for the
management of their day-to-day relationships with the outside world.  Poor
communication connectivity, lack of information, and rural isolation conspired
to prevent tribes from effectively organizing to resist the landslide of
Western civilization.    
     Thus one can argue that the European invasion of the New World was
successful, in part, to the rapid evolution of communication technologies and
popular access to the information encoded there-in.  Brown (1989) noted that
in the late 1700's most information (in Western society) was communicated
face-to-face where..."public information and learning generally flowed from
the upper reaches of society downward to the common people- a hierarchical
diffusion pattern" (p. 280).  A change in the role of print and the way it was
distributed improved the access that Europeans had to information. 
     Advanced transportation technologies (the horse, sailboat, train, etc.),
combined with the advent of the telegraph to revolutionize the rate of
information exchange across distances. However, face-to-face communication
remained the primary mode of information exchange for Native people for
several generations longer than found in the dominant culture.
     Indian adaptation of western communication medium was actively resisted
by the invading society. For example, the first reported use of a tribally
owned newspaper occurred in 1828.  A story in itself, the Cherokee Phoenix was
more than just a newspaper; it (like Sequoyah) became a symbol of Cherokee
literacy and cultural integrity. Cherokee literacy in their own written and
spoken language soon exceeded that of white settlers in the same region of
the Carolinas.  It should be no surprise that the political and civic messages
of cultural unity that were being delivered by the Cherokee press were found
threatening by the surrounding anglo culture who coveted Indian land.  Under
President Jackson's administration the Cherokee Phoenix was destroyed by
troops and Cherokee land given away by lottery.  Forced on foot to the new
Indian territory in Oklahoma, many lives were lost and literacy in spoken and
written Cherokee has yet to be recovered to it's former level.  
     Radio and television came later to the reservations than to the rest of
the country. The first "TV Generation" of Indian children have only recently
reached adulthood; and many reservation communities and homes now have cable
or satellite receivers.  One might think that in today's more politically correct
world Indian children would have escaped the stereotypical images drilled into
all members of U.S. society by the western movies.   Indian warriors attacking
the workers who installed the telegraph wires; horseback attacks against
steam locomotives and wagon trains; Wells Fargo and the Pony Express riders
racing from certain death at the hands of murderous savages.  It made for
exciting movies but did little to promote positive personal identities for
Indian youth ...or recommend career choices in the communication industries!
Satellite distribution and cable T.V. have immortalized these movies with the
invention of the "Western Channel".  These images symbolized the European
concept that "the West was wild" (like the Indians) and that modern
communications were the tools for civilizing it. 
     In short, history shows that American Indians have not actively resisted
the adoption of new communication technologies.  In fact, just the opposite is
true. Never-the-less, stereotypical images of Indian hostility toward
communication technology still persist in the public's mind.  Today we find that
these images are still used and incorporated as political myth by the media
campaigns of various special interest groups.  Political actions groups create
media campaigns which are used to manipulating public opinion and ultimately
public policy.  
     Political myths are stories communicated by one's society that serve the
functional purpose of conveying appropriate attitudes and behaviors to the
members. The political myth embodied in the traditional media image of Indians
focuses on the unchanging nature of the Indian's culture.  By focusing the
publics imagination on Indians as archaic history, the myth serves the
function of discounting the significant social change that Indian culture has
undergone... and the role that communication technology has played in this
transformation.  In this particular instance, the myth helps to gloss over the
significant use that Indians have made in  controlling their own communication
and information technologies.
     Special interest groups now manipulate the political myth for their own
purposes.  For example, the environmental movement bombards the public with
video images of traditionally garbed tribal elders who stoically cry (one tear)
while reflecting the pollution of our nations rivers.  As politically correct as
this image may seem, like State financed "Indian tourism" it foster a world view
of tribal cultures that - in resisting technological change- either died or
became an endangered species.
     This stereotype clashes dramatically with the reality of tribal
councilmen who are considering the use of reservation lands as storage for
nuclear and medical waste.  Or consider the tribal council that must choose
between subcontractors who will design software that will integrate casino/
bingo operations with overall tribal budgets-- or the tribal planner utilizing
a Geographic Information System to track development of tribal roads and
industry.
     Few of today's tribal leaders will disagree that the acculturation of Indian
people continues; most of us working in communications fields would might even
be hard pressed to explain how Native communications are "different" from the
dominant media.  Why should computer communication networks change any of
this?  Murphy and Murphy write "Indians have had to modify their culture by
contact with the white culture, but they have not become absorbed.  The
adaptation of the  "white man's media" to the Indians' needs is, yet another in-
stance of such acculturation (p. 132).  Computer networks are similarly being
assimilated. Mass media communication theory predicts that in the act of media
consumption (using computer-mediated communications) Native people will again
find their view of self and society changing.  
     The very act of watching T.V. or listening to the radio is said to
influence cultural change and self concepts.  Native communication
professionals insist that the message embedded in our minority media is
(somehow) culturally different than that found in the dominant communication
networks.  Native communication professions assert that tribal people must
struggle to preserve media content which reaffirms cultural values.  The
"electronic migration" of Indian people into our nation's growing
infrastructure of computer communication networks thus presents itself as
the latest chapter in the history of Native assimilation of communication
technology..
     Today information, which is the raw material of communication networks,
is treated as marketable commodity.  Stories about our ancestors, traditional
myths, and particularly the cultural traditions related to protecting the
ecology have become products for sale,  as much as they are a force for social
good. These stories, not surprisingly, are often written by non-Indian
authors,  scripted by non-Indian screen writers, and star non-Indians in
Indian roles.  Indian people, like Americans in general, have become consumers
of information about themselves with few of us actively engaged in the
production end of the economic equation.  
     The overwhelming presence of non-natives in the newsgroups and
listserves of the INTERNET has made many Indian people passive viewers about
conversations about themselves! 

INDIANS AND COMPUTERS
     In stark contrast to this media image outlined earlier in this paper,  today
there are hundreds of tribally owned and operated newspapers, dozens of
radio stations, and a growing number of Indian controlled communication compa-
nies (see Murphy and Murphy).  Computer networks are only now being recognized
as a communication medium useful for Indian people.  One must desert the
fanciful thinking fostered by the "Western Channel" and see Indian people and
organizations for what they are: readers must imagine Indian youth, academics,
and scientists in locations all over the United States as they hover over
glowing terminals,  fingers flying on clicking keyboards.
     Many of the Indian people communicate in this manner for hours each
week.  Some are collaborating with research teams, others are receiving
in-service training for college credit, many are simply chatting with their
friends at other BIA boarding schools.  Collectively they have become active
in an electronic "virtual ethnic community" which is worldwide in its
membership.
     Describing the boundary of this "virtual ethnic community" is difficult. 
The closest comparison that we have too it is the minority owned mass media,
particularly radio and press.  For example, tribally controlled papers and
radio programs have been immensely popular with their audience, but must
struggle to keep from being absorbed by larger communication corporations.
Advances in computer communications have challenged the tribes to master
even newer techniques for communication, and being "absorbed" in the chaos
of communication still remains a problem.
     Numerous listservs and bulletin board systems have developed distinct
ethnic biases, a fact fairly well understood by those who use computer
communication networks. The emergence of Jewish, Hispanic, Latino, Black, Gay
and Lesbian as well as American Indian and Alaskan Native computer networks
was, in retrospect, inevitable.  Like radio and press, these communication
formats must strive to maintain their ethnic identity and this is difficult
within the politically open forum of the INTERNET and BITNET newsgroups and
listservs.
     The borders of these growing "virtual communities" are defined not so
much by their geography, but by the interests of the participants, which in this
case is focused on the real or imagined ethnicity of the user.  Native
networked communities include participants representing the children of the
First Nations attending Canadian schools (Seaton, 1984) and Alaskan Native and
American Indian junior high school students who attend reservation boarding
schools. Graduate and undergraduate Indian college students and their
professors from major colleges and universities are also on-line. Remarkably,
tribal members relocated in urban areas or even Europe can communicate with
their rural or reservation cousins!  
     The manifest functions of the majority of these CC networks has been
to support education, research, and improve access to public data for tribal
development.   The latent function of these networks- as one "reads between
the lines"  is to promote and defend native cultural beliefs and values.  Both
of these functions can be discerned from the content of the written
conversations.  The participants,  as well as their audience, represent a
fascinating component of the pan-Indianism; the intertribal social movement
where several tribes unite, usually to confront an enemy such as the federal
government  (Shaefer, 1990).   
     The content of the on-line discussions suggests that there is a growing
agreement that the enemy to Native cultural survival is the increasingly
ubiquitous Western world view promoted by the "transmedia intertextual
phenomena of television, radio, press, and video games" (Kinder,1991).  The
phenomena of computer-mediated communication (CMC) networks as transmitters
of cultural beliefs and values has not been studied as have been radio,
television, and film media,  but clearly minority groups are organizing within
our nations growing computer communication infrastructure in a manner similar
to earlier media.  
     Contrary to stereotypical images, American Indians and Alaskan Natives
are not strangers to computer technology.  Several social and economic forces
have actually encouraged the growth of computer use in Indian populations.
Perhaps the major force was the growth of an extensive government
bureaucracy on reservations. The government offices acquired an
infrastructure of PC's and mainframes and in turn these systems required
trained clerks and managers to operate them.  Federal funding supported both. 
As a result, tribes such as the Cherokee and Navajo has several mainframes
each, and dozens of PCs.   Numerous surveys of Indian organizations find that
even our smallest groups invariably have a computer, printer, and telephone.
     Indian boarding schools and reservation schools have a significant
investment in computer hardware, primarily Apple II's (Pilz and Resta, 1991).   
The twenty-seven Indian colleges have even higher student-to-faculty
computer ratios (American Indian Higher Education Consortium, 1992).  These
two studies tell us that the technological density (number of computers per
person) is respectable in comparison to non-Indian schools.  
     The pedagogical use of these systems is generally not reported. As a
consequence there are dozens of culturally supportive computer
uses/projects nationwide with few of the Indian project directors aware of
the work that others are involved in.   There have been a few published
reports on the pioneering uses of distance learning technologies for Native
education.  Most of these have not been as well documented and have been
published by non-Indian organizations and principle investigators who
received grants for demonstration projects which included an Indian school or
organization as part of the required funding formula.   Most grant writers
intuitively understand the process of getting extra points in a proposal by
including the statement "American Indians and Alaskan Natives".  Such projects
generally benefit the (non-Indian) institution that manages the grant and the
non-Indian schools that make up the majority of the audience.  Rarely is the
curriculum material tailored to the Indian world view.    
          Some observes have noted that in the past policies which were
intended to assist Indian/Alaskan Native to purchase information and
communication technology were subverted and used primarily to benefit
non-Indians.  This has been referred to by one observer as "information
carpetbagging" (Baldwin, 1992).  One must wonder about the educational
effectiveness of currently funded Star School Programs, the BIA's ENAN
network, and the Mansfield Transcontinental Classroom... all of which have
named Indian schools as beneficiaries in their projects. 
     As the National Research and Educational Network (NREN) develops, we can
rest assured that a growing number of government services and information
sources will be made available electronically. Like television, radio, and the
telephone, computer communications will be necessary for commerce and
education.  If one ignores the access issue... which should not be ignored...How
useful will these systems be for American Indians and their organizations? 
For example, FEDIX has become an easily accessible and usable 1-800 federal
information service.  Grants and funding sources are indexed for African
Americans and women, but like most public database systems on the INTERNET
nothing is indexed by the key term "American Indian or Alaskan Native".  The
INTERNET GOPHER will not find anything.  There is, however, a number of
listservs and one public FTP site at Cornell for storing and retrieving Indian
information.   
     The act of using federal legislation as a tool to promote the use of
communication technologies by minorities has occurred in a number of
instances, for example the National American Indian Public Broadcasting
Corporation and radio networks. The American Indian Higher Education
Consortium was recently funded by the Dept. of Commerce to create a satellite
video network.  This approach to increasing the participation of Native people
in communication media will likely welcome the pattern in the future.  Bills
which have been written for the general public may become modified by
attaching an American Indian "entitlement".  
     Such entitlements are often misunderstood by the American public, again
this is part of the political myth that Indians must struggle with. 
Entitlements are not handouts, they are earnings based on returns from
historical contracts called treaties.  American Indians are the only minorities
mentioned by name in the constitution and congress made treaties with the
tribes that guaranteed health care, education, housing, and an entire range
of services.   Many Indian leaders assert that these treaty-based earnings,
broadly interpreted, must include electronic access to government agency
databases and documents:  access to computerized network information
services.
     
     Computerized Network Information Services (NIS) are the most recent
communication technology to influence the direction of social change
experienced by American Indians (Baldwin, 1992).  NIS systems deliver text,
graphics, audio, and video in digital form over various kinds of
telecommunication carriers.  There are at this time only a few NIS operated
for, and sometimes by, American Indians.  Like Indian newspapers, radio, and
television broadcasts they meet the special needs of Indians and those who
are interested in Indian affairs.  How will these systems impact Native
culture?   
     Sociologists and anthropologist have long argued that exposure to media,
be it print or electronic, can doing nothing but facilitate the assimilation of
those who view it.  The groundswell of enthusiasm for using communication
technologies to promote the Native world view seems to have ignored this fact. 
Projects currently being proposed include INDIANnet (Americans for Indian
Opportunity), the American Indian Higher Education Telecommunication Network
(for the 27 Indian colleges), and the National Museum of the American Indian's
"Fourth Museum" concept. How do American Indians and Alaskan Natives feel
about the new technologies?  
     The Native Communication Survey commissioned by the National Indian
Policy Center found that the majority of the respondents reported uncritical
acceptance of these technologies and the communication technologies ability
to support the tribal communities beliefs. The respondents answers implied
that the values expressed in the media are entirely in control of the
producers,  independent of the technology that delivered the message.  
     Native communication professionals also agree that in an increasingly
unregulated telecommunication market where text, video, and radio have
merged, they must take action to protect their self-interests.  There is a
growing agreement that tribal autonomy and self-determination can only be
served if Indian people own a share of the communication infrastructure and
become active producers of the information. For this to happen, Indian people
must write and produce their own stories and films.  They must manage and
control their own communication companies.  In today's world of emerging NIS,
they must compile, distribute and control the organizations that create such
information industries.  This is the business of economic development in the
age of information.  Such development will produce careers for young Native
people, many of whom have already demonstrated a remarkable ability to utilize
computer technology within the context of tribal community values.
     The changes to society wrought by communication technologies are
profound.  It is imperative that tribal policy makers begin to develop a critical
perspective for understanding Network Information Systems, NREN, and
information policy in order that we possess our share of the technology and
shape it to our own needs.  One of the first tasks in this process is to have
tribal developers, educators, and leaders address the impact of this new
technology by articulating values ... about the basic purpose of and uses that
communication networks can have for Indian people.  
     The concern expressed by Indian leaders familiar with the media is that
the vast potential will not be harnessed to promote cultural and economic
progress but will perpetuate the historical subjugation of Indian people.  We
have been passive consumers of information about ourselves for to long.




                       SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY        

Baldwin, George D.
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Brown, Richard
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Carey, John
    1969  "The Communication Revolution and the Professional
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Kinder, Marsha
     1991  Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video
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Lundstedt, Sven B. (edit)
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McPhail, Thomas L.
   1987  Electronic Colonialism:  The Future of International
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Mander, Jerry
     1991  In The Absence of the Sacred:  The Failure of   
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Mosco, Vincent
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Murphy, James and, Sharon
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National Indian Policy Center
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Office of Technology Assessment
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Piltz, Arlie and Resta, Paul
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Schaefer, Richard
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Traber, Michael
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.