HIGHER ACCESS. Steve Dupuis climbs high above Pablo, MT, to assure that transceivers provide Internet access for reservation residents.

Eight years after Chief Sitting Bull, prophetic chief of the Great Sioux Nation, was assassinated in 1890, Guglielmo Marconi transmitted the first wireless telegraph signals across the Atlantic to England. Although these two events seem unrelated, the names of these two men of vision are linked together today by Marconi’s wireless invention. Data, voice, and video are transmitted over a wireless (radio wave) network to a tribal college named Sitting Bull.

Improving on Marconi’s original invention, wireless technology is providing Internet access on Indian reservations and communities where telephone dial up is slow or non-existent. Wireless technology is improving educational opportunities for Native students taking courses on the Internet through distance learning. Wireless technology is enhancing tribal sovereignty over the airwaves above reservations.

What is this technology? Wireless technology is any connection (radio frequency or infrared beams, for example) where two pieces of equipment talk to one another without the use of telephone wires, according to Frank Tyro, media director at Salish Kootenai College. It includes everything in the spectral zones known as unlicensed bands from cell phones, Internet connections, garage door openers, and baby monitors.

In the context of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) wireless project, it provides broadband access without the use of T-1 terrestrial lines. It provides a bridge across the digital divide, allowing access to knowledge, grants, resources, and potentially economic development.

“A few years ago, many tribal colleges had only one computer on their entire campus connected to the Internet, and that connection was through telephone dial-up access!” says Dr. Gerald “ Carty” Monette (Ojibwa), president of Turtle Mountain Community College. “Computer labs were non-existent, or if they did exist, they had old, cast-off equipment,” according to Monette, who also chairs the AIHEC Committee on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.

In those days, tribal colleges and universities could not meet federal agencies’ requirements that grant proposals, reports, and other documents be submitted electronically on-line. Their students could not access the wealth of research information available via the Internet and the AIHEC Virtual Library. Nor could they share courses and instructors through web-based delivery systems. Many residents of their communities did not even have telephones.

Today, despite remoteness and poverty, every one of the 34 tribal colleges and universities in the United States has achieved broadband Internet connectivity, most through multiple T-1 lines. Most have well-equipped computer labs, growing distance education programs, and faculty who use technology to enhance teaching and learning in new and innovative ways.

To make this transition, AIHEC worked with a dynamic network of federal agencies, foundations, and corporations. The National Science Foundation (NSF) played a significant role because of its focus on narrowing the digital divide for minority communities. NSF has a special project for tribal, Hispanic serving, and historically black colleges and universities, which it calls the Advanced Networking-Minority Serving Institutions (AN-MSI) Initiative in Technology.

Creating an Invisible Infrastructure

AIHEC wanted to explore the effectiveness of wireless technology for solving the substantial data and voice transmission problems on reservations, according to AIHEC Technology Director Carrie Billy (Navajo). Initially funded by a grant from the NSF and managed by EDUCAUSE, the project provided hardware, software, and training to implement wireless solutions on American Indian reservations. (EDUCAUSE is a non-profit association of colleges and universities, which has played a leadership role in higher education networking since the first days of the Internet.)

The project planners realized that tribal institutions could not operate effectively on reservations where there was little or no terrestrial infrastructure. The fact that tribal nations have sovereignty also intrigued them because tribal colleges and universities should have more freedom under the FCC to implement different types of wireless technology, according to Mark Luker of EDUCAUSE.

“The technology initiative is not a luxury; it is not done just to provide a wider selection of courses for students,” according to Billy. “It is critical because of where the tribal colleges are located. Pine Ridge, SD, and Belcourt, ND, for example, are very isolated places; it is very difficult to attract faculty. So, distance education is really important, particularly when it comes to higher level math and science courses.” Tribal colleges can offer a variety of courses delivered from mainstream universities or other tribal colleges to local classrooms.

“American Indians are the poorest people in this country. Three of the five poorest counties in this country are home to tribal colleges. Many Indian reservations have unemployment rates that range from 50 to 75%. When reservation-based Indians go directly from high school to a mainstream four-year institution, they have a failure rate of over 80%,” Billy says.

“Tribal colleges have actually been able to turn that statistic around. A student who goes to a tribal college, and then moves on to a mainstream four-year institution has about an 80-85% chance of succeeding and graduating with an advanced degree. One recent study showed that 75% of the graduates of tribal colleges either went to work in their community or went on to get a four-year degree. That is life changing for a family but also life changing for a whole nation of people.”

Pilot Projects on Rural Reservations

When the AIHEC project began in August 2000, four tribal colleges were chosen to pilot the state of the art, broadband wireless technology:

• Sitting Bull College, Fort Yates, ND
• Turtle Mountain Community College, Belcourt, ND
• Fort Peck Community College, Poplar, MT
• Fort Berthold Community College, New Town, ND

An outside group reviewed the applications and selected the colleges based upon a list of criteria that the project wanted to explore. The four reservations are typical of most of those served by tribal colleges. Their communities are located hundreds of miles from mainstream universities and city employment opportunities.

At Sitting Bull College on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, the team first tested various wireless technologies to determine which would be the most feasible for the other tribal colleges. The Standing Rock Indian Reservation occupies 2.3 million acres of primarily rolling hills in the foothills of the Missouri River area on the North Dakota/South Dakota border. About 11,000 people live on the reservation, 8,572 of them tribal members. In this remote, rural region of the Dakotas, wireless technology promised to connect the communities.

Tribal College AN-MSI Project Director Tom Davis notes that wireless technology can help address long-term inequities, such as the lack of telephone access to significant portions of tribal areas. Nearly a third of the houses on the Turtle Mountain Reservation, for example, don’t even have telephones. Information technology is becoming essential for economic activity. “Those places without access to such technology are, most likely, going to be relegated to second class economic status within this country and the world,” he says.

While urban concentration makes it more economical for telecommunications companies to install fiber optic cable to provide broadband access, low density in rural areas can make the costs prohibitive, especially for the “last mile.” To install underground fiber optic cables on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana, the Ronan Telephone Company charges $2,344 a mile just for the technician and the wire. Davis says, “Wireless technology can reduce that expense and let us hook up to the last mile.”

The wireless project relies upon miniature radio transceivers that both transmit and receive signals, according to Steve Dupuis (Salish/Kootenai), who has been involved with the project since the beginning. The transceivers must be installed on a line of sight with one another on rooftops and towers. Depending upon whether the terrain is flat or mountainous, it poses different problems.

Turtle Mountain, a 6- by 12-mile patch of rolling hills and deciduous forest near the Canadian border, is home to some 11,600 Chippewa people. “The challenge to install wireless at Turtle Mountain was the terrain, to find strategic towers high enough on the hill to connect by line of sight with the next tower,” Dupuis says. They also wanted locations that could provide coverage for potential subscribers.

WORKING MAGIC. Melanie Strong, a student in Salish Kootenai College’s Bachelor of Information Technology program, attaches a miniature radio transceiver to the reflector dish, making Internet access possible without telephone lines.

Ben Chromyj, the current project manager at Turtle Mountain, says the effort has been worthwhile. “The service can provide Internet access for all residents of the reservation and the surrounding communities of Belcourt and Raleigh. Today, Turtle Mountain Community College offers many courses over the Internet.” The college also provides wireless Internet access within its buildings. Students can do research on the Internet while sitting with their laptops in the cafeteria.

Turtle Mountain would like to expand its project, but the grant funding ended last year. Now they can’t hire staff to maintain the initial equipment. Monette says project promoters have been meeting with other potential funders. In the future, they hope to increase the number of subscribers and to reduce costs by building wind and solar power generators to provide more cost-efficient power for the towers.

Culture Affects Choices

Similar plans are underway at the Fort Berthold Reservation, home to over 3,500 members of the Hidatsa, Arikara, and Mandan peoples. The reservation was divided by construction of Garrison Dam, which created Lake Sacajawea. There is one antiquated bridge crossing for miles of water separating the two sides of the reservation. Fort Berthold Community College has depended upon a T-1 line to link the college headquarters in New Town to students in other communities. The T-1 delivers classes via video and voice, but it costs $50,000 a year.

To switch from the T-1 to wireless delivery, the college experimented with renting space on a water tower and the local community radio FM tower, according to Henry Sun (Mandan-Hidatsa), the acting director of information technology at the college. However, the radio tower interfered with their wireless transmission, and it was difficult for the technicians to service the towers. The college had hoped to put up its own tower on one of the buttes in the area, but several buttes had too much cultural and spiritual importance to be used.

By late this spring, the college expects to have an agreement worked out to share a Bureau of Indian Affairs school tower, thus saving $50,000 a year minus some minor maintenance costs.

Sun looks forward to the changes that wireless will bring to the reservation. “We need to increase the numbers of students attending the college and improve the growth potential for the community. Wireless Internet service can accomplish these goals. You don’t have to live in a big city to have access to technology. We are serving our people with cost-effective technology.”

When Salish Kootenai College began its wireless project on the Flathead Reservation in Montana, Steve Dupuis built upon his experience with radio frequency design and operation and with project design. SKC plans to charge for the equipment and installation, along with a monthly fee for Internet service, and to use that income to help support the project.

The SKC project planning involved elders. “We have to help the elders understand what is going on with the technology. Many elders are fearful that the technology will open up the language and ceremonies to non-tribal members.” The project team reassured the elders, telling them the distance education classes are all password-protected so outsiders cannot access them.

The Flathead Reservation includes mountains, some of which have traditional cultural importance to tribes. Like the Fort Berthold project, the SKC project didn’t use culturally important sites for towers.

Looking to the Future

On a recent visit to Salish Kootenai College from their homeland in Australia, a small group of indigenous people from Queensland, learned about the wireless project there. They were astonished at seeing snow for the first time but even more surprised to see the tribal college working with such sophisticated technology.

Samarra Toby (South Sea Island/Northern Cheyenne) remarked,  “You have amazing resources available for your students. We don’t have tribal colleges for our people much less all of these cutting edge resources.”

Wireless technology has come a long way since Marconi’s first transatlantic transmission, and so have Indian people. Wireless technology can connect Indian people on remote reservations to one another, to educational opportunities, and to a vast array of resources within the realm of cyberspace. With this new weapon, the tribal colleges and universities are constructing a reality for the next seven generations built on Chief Sitting Bull’s vision: “Let us put our minds together to see what we can build for our children.”

Dr. Lori Lambert (Abenaki/Mi’kmaq) is director of the Title III: Distance Education/ Elementary Education project at Salish Kootenai College. She was the recipient of the 2001 Sloan-C Excellence in Asynchronous Teaching Award, a national award for online teaching, and winner of the prestigious International Course Award from the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences. She lives in Pablo, MT, with her husband (Frank Tyro) and six huskies.