February 3, 2020, tribal college students and leaders met in Washington, DC for the American Indian Higher Education Consortium’s (AIHEC’s) annual legislative summit. During the initial planning session, AIHEC staffers carefully reviewed their main priorities, one of which was the inclusion of TCUs in the E-Rate program, a federal fund that could help improve internet access and bandwidth. One point that AIHEC stressed was that TCUs had by far the slowest internet speeds when compared to other institutions of higher education. A third of TCUs had speeds of 100 megabytes per second (MBps) or less, compared to the national average of 513 MBps. Moreover, 35% of Indian Country didn’t even have broadband service, and those who did paid exorbitantly for it despite the fact that tribal communities were some of the poorest places in the nation. Iḷisaġvik College, for example, paid $250,000 per year for internet speeds of 6 MBps. To compound it all, TCUs often had outdated IT equipment with a refresh rate of every eight or nine years, compared to the three to five-year national average. “We really need to pay attention to addressing the digital divide,” stated AIHEC president Carrie Billy. “It’s really shameful it still exists.”

The following day, TCU delegations met with their respective congressional representatives and senators to point out these disparities and request appropriate remedies. But as they marched up Capitol Hill there was a palpable sense of unease in the air. Images of panic-stricken medical workers running through the streets of Rome emblazoned the front page of many newspapers, and reports that stateside there were up to a dozen cases of the new “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2” flashed across television screens. Although then President Trump attempted to reassure Americans, stating that all the concern was alarmist and that “we have it totally under control . . . It’s going to be just fine,” the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization (WHO) said otherwise. Over the next two months, the number of cases mounted and the alarm bells grew louder, as it became clear that we weren’t going to be just fine. On March 2, there were 100 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus; on March 12, 1,500; on March 14, 2,700; on March 17, 5,145; and by the end of the month there were 164,620 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States alone. Trump declared a national emergency. WHO stated we were in a pandemic. California issued a stay-at-home order. And the Ohio State University suspended all face-to-face classes. By April, about the only sounds heard at any given college or university campus were crickets chirping.

As place-based, community institutions on the other side of the digital divide, TCUs faced a serious challenge that most colleges or universities didn’t. Some TCUs like Chief Dull Knife College on the Northern Cheyenne reservation in Montana were forced to shut down until they could resume face-to-face instruction. Others, like Sitting Bull College (SBC) on the Standing Rock reservation reverted to pre-internet distance education strategies where faculty pieced together paper course packets and mailed or handed them out to students in the campus parking lot. At Stone Child College on the Rocky Boy’s reservation in northern Montana, faculty and administrators called up students or, for those who didn’t have phones, tracked down relatives to pass along information about their classes. Cankdeska Cikana Community College on the Spirit Lake reservation in North Dakota used reserve funds to purchase laptops and even phone minutes for students whose only connectivity was through a TracFone. Throughout Indian Country, such improvisation and resilience carried the day. “If it requires us going old school,” stated SBC’s dean of academics, Shawn Holz, “that’s what we do. . . . It’s about being creative.”

Fortunately, AIHEC had an informed understanding of the problem before it unfolded. In 2017, the organization had received a National Science Foundation grant to review and study TCU cyberinfrastructure capacity and needs. The findings not only illuminated digital divide details such as internet speed, connectivity cost, and equipment refresh rates, but it also enabled AIHEC to develop a cyberinfrastructure community of practice among TCU IT directors. The organization held monthly Zoom meetings and conducted campus visits where they shared information on new IT technologies and practices. They also discussed online instruction and the related challenges due to poor connectivity and outdated equipment. Through these collective efforts, the vast majority of TCUs were able to keep their doors open, improvise, and fight through what was undoubtedly one of the most challenging times in the history of the tribal college movement.

Jim Bottum, Dale Smith, Alex Grandon, and Russell Hoffman recount the origins and evolution of AIHEC’s CI team and community of practice in the feature article, “Connecting Minds and Building Capacity.” Today, one of their foremost concerns is cybersecurity. The dramatic increase in remote learning and online operations that followed on the heels of the pandemic resulted in new and more insidious cybersecurity threats and ransomware attacks. And the malicious actors behind such cyberattacks have few qualms about targeting nonprofit educational institutions like tribal colleges. One TCU IT director whose institution was targeted bluntly stated, “the attack didn’t just disrupt operations, it completely disabled us.” Bottum, Smith, grandon, and Hoffman explain how AIHEC is coordinating support so that TCUs can better protect themselves and reduce their risk profile.

As AIHEC’s CI team works on cyberinfrastructure and cybersecurity needs, the organization’s Aseto’ne Network Project, an Indigenous healthcare initiative, has created an online learning platform for its new virtual institute. No matter where in Indian Country they are located, students can connect online with mentors and earn specialized, culturally rooted credentials. Whether meeting synchronously or asynchronously, the cloud-based platform harnesses myriad digital resources so that students can get the healthcare training they need to uplift their tribal communities. Read more in Reno Charette’s feature article, “Mitakuye Oyasin: Accelerating Connectedness Through the Aseto’ne Network Project.”

Meanwhile, this issue’s installment of Talking Circle looks at how one tribal college has approached the digital divide by investing heavily in educational technology. Although Red Lake Nation College (RLNC) in northern Minnesota just recently earned accreditation, the institution recognized from the outset how building its cyberinfrastructure would be critical for future operations. Hence, when the pandemic forced other institutions to shut down, RLNC was well-positioned to move classes online, including culture and language courses. Indeed, RLNC’s Ojbwemowin I and II classes actually saw improved completion rates from 2018 to 2022. Find out more in Mandy Schram and Lucas gaagige Anakwad Bratvold’s article, “Leveraging Technology to Increase Course Engagement at Red Lake Nation College.”

As evidenced in this issue of Tribal College Journal, AIHEC and its member tribal colleges are working tirelessly to bridge the digital divide. Although they face hurdles unknown in most quarters, TCUs, like their chartering Native nations, wrote the book on resiliency, innovation, and overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

Bradley Shreve, PhD, is editor of Tribal College journal.

REFERENCES

Billy, C., Kuslikis, A., Shreve, B., & Sievert, R. (2023). Adaptation as Indigenous Practice: TCUs and the Coronavirus Pandemic. In j.O. Michel (Ed.), Higher Education amid the COVID-19 Pandemic: Teaching and Supporting Learning through Turbulent Times. Brunswick, Nj: Rutgers University Press (forthcoming).

Shreve, B. (2020, April 14). Coping with the Contagion: How Tribal Colleges Are Responding to COVID-19, A Special Report. Tribal College: Journal of American Indian Higher Education. Retrieved from https://tribalcollegejournal.org/coping-with-the-contagion-how-tribal-colleges-are-responding-to-covid-19- a-special-report/

Timeline of the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States (2020). (n.d.). Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_COVID- 19_pandemic_in_the_United_States_(2020)