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Submitted to the
National Network of Libraries of Medicine
Pacific Northwest Region
by
Dr. George D. Baldwin
Social and Behavioral Science Center
California State University Monterey Bay
The US National Library of Medicine (NLM), located at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, MD, has a long-standing commitment to the effective dissemination and use of biomedical information within the health community. To help achieve this goal, NLM has, since 1989, collaborated with Regional Medical Libraries (RMLs) in its National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM) to conduct outreach to health professionals, especially those in rural, minority, or other under-served communities.
This paper is one of a number of works which have been contracted by NN/LM to guide an outreach delivery project, which will provide electronic information to health professionals serving American Indian and Alaskan Native populations in the Pacific Northwest. It is divided into three parts, plus a bibliography and appendix.
Part I is a social history of American Indian and Alaskan Native (AI/AN) attitudes toward communication technology and how such technology may be related to Native patterns of learning. Attitudes toward television are discussed and then compared to what little is known about Native attitudes toward network information systems (NIS).
Part II is a review and social history of the telecommunication intervention programs that appeared during the early 1990's. The programs reviewed were funded as a result of policy changes within the National Science Foundation, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, and the Indian Health Service.
Part III is a summary and discussion of program design, intervention models, and evaluation of the programs reviewed.
Appendix: The Federal and non-Federally recognized tribes in Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington are identified and listed. The Native corporations of Alaska are identified and the villages that are part of each corporation have been named and listed.
The author concludes that most of the strategies reviewed were designed specifically to intervene in the information-seeking behavior of Indian professionals, but not health practitioners. Nevertheless, the strategies reviewed have the common program components that address the perceived need (of the end-user) for (1) ease of access to network resources, (2) teleliteracy training needs, and (3) the creation of a system of behavioral rewards that encourage long-term changes in the information-seeking habits of the target population. Of the intervention strategies reviewed, only those funded by the National Science and W. K. Kellogg Foundations have included formal evaluation designs as part of the overall intervention strategy. Both foundation projects are still in progress and first year evaluations are pending.
Key-Words: Native American Indian / Alaskan Native / demographics / health care / computer mediated communication / evaluation
The purpose of this report is: (1) to summarize what is known about American Indian and Alaskan Native (AI/AN) attitudes toward communication technology, (2) to explore how technology interacts with AI/AN learning styles, (3) to review the history of social policy that created selected telecommunication intervention programs for AI/AN populations, and (4) to provide a descriptive demographic database useful for selecting communities, organizations, and individuals for the proposed program.
It is the intent of NN/LM to create a connections program that will provide on-line medical information to Native health care professionals. In providing this information service, NN/LM will also bring the Internet to native communities and institutional settings where it has never been. Thus, it becomes an institutional agent of change, one of several, that share a common goal of linking AI/AN communities to the Internet. Few researchers were interested in the impact of the telegraph, newspapers, radio, or even television on Native people. This project will provide and evaluate both an information service and connectivity. Such an evaluation will require a degree of cultural sensitivity as well as a grasp of the history of Native people in relationship to technology, especially communication technology. The following section provides a short social history of communication media and American Indians and Alaskan Natives.
There is a curious image that forms in the public's mind when we think of indigenous people and technology. That image invokes Isaac Asimov's famous saying (paraphrased), "that any technology advanced beyond our comprehension will appear as magic". In such portrayals, natives are awed and fearful of technology that appears (to them) as magic. Such imagery, created by television and film, dramatized Indians attacking the Pony Express and the trains, and cutting telegraph wires. Western movies and novels equated social progress with modern communication and transportation technologies. They dramatized how Indians resisted both, usually from horseback: an irony that most audiences missed. It is, however, a fascinating example how Native people have historically been quick to assimilate new inventions and communication technology.
A thoughtful analysis will show that tribally controlled newspapers have played a vital role in Indian communities. Similarly, Native radio stations have strengthened community identity on numerous reservations and provided a voice for American Indians and Alaskan Natives in our largest urban areas. In the age of mass media, Native communication professionals--including writers, producers, and directors--are a small portion of one of the fastest growing sectors of the global economy.
Traditionally, mass media has been controlled by advertisers on Madison Avenue and producers in Hollywood. Advertising supports most media, from a full-page ad in Newsweek to a ten-second Saturday night slot on CBS. With audiences viewed as consumers, these "captains of consciousness" battle to create consumer desires in highly defined "market segments" of the global population. American Indians have never been a large "market segment" for anything, given that they are arguably the smallest federally protected minority group in the United States. However, as an image commodity Indians and their culture have figured prominently in movie scripts and advertising. Thus, Indians have been useful to the communication industry as icons and stereotypes useful for selling products by making an otherwise boring presentation more colorful. This media attention has conspired to confuse not only the general public concerning Indians and their attitudes about technology but it has confused Indians as well! Indians watch the same shows and advertisements as the rest of the population; thus the content of their own consciousness of self and their community identity becomes colonized by the consumer ideology embedded in the communication media. The complexity of native identity, the variety of communication media, and the relatively small number of American Indian and Alaskan Natives (AI/AN) conspire to give little voice to Native people about their attitudes toward communication technology.
The Internet and the multimedia communication networks found there have created a new paradigm for viewing the interaction of technology and society as they influence and change culture and individual social identity. These systems, in theory, are interactive, allowing users to "converse" about the content of the texts that are available on the network. Such dialog has been impossible with the mass media systems of the past, notably television. Barret (1995) coined the term "sociomedia" to describe the social aspects of our global information superhighway.
Sociomedia have created an "epistemological pluralism" (Turkle & Papert, 1990). These systems allow for a tremendous amount of choice and interaction in the social construction of knowledge: about ourselves, our cultures, and in this case the social construction of the native cultural identity. The social construction of Indian (or tribal) identities has been problematic enough before the advent of the Internet. Now one may chose, with the click of a mouse, a sociomedia environment that supports the social views and ideals of the end user. Consider the classic cartoon in the New Yorker of the two dogs using their master's computer. One turns to the other and says, "On the Internet, no one knows you are a dog." The social construction of identity as a social problem has only recently been recognized by the public. Where once Indians struggled with the stereotypical images on TV, on the Internet, even more so than in the real world, "anyone can be an Indian." This project proposes to add one more level of functionality to the sociomedia texts that support such a knowledge system. The question that awaits the final evaluation will be "was this just one more project that colonizes Indian communities with a technology driven by consumer ideology?" or did the project create a sociomedia environment in which Native end users were empowered to become active producers of knowledge about themselves and their culture?
The following sections relate what is known about American Indian attitudes toward television, and then for comparison, what is known about AI/AN attitudes toward network information systems (NIS). A discussion about computer technology and its relationship to Native learning styles is included.
"You have to realize that most people still live in extended families here. Ten people might live in a one- or two-room house. The TV is going all the time and the little kids and the old people and everyone are all sitting there together watching it. Now they'll all be seeing men beating up naked women. It's so crazy and awful. Nobody ever told us that all this would be coming with television. It's like some kind of invasion from other space or something. First it was the government, then those oil companies, and now it's TV."
-Cindy Gilday, Dene (Pacific Northwest), quoted in Mander (p. 109)
Gilday (quoted above) summarized the findings of Jerry Mander's widely cited work about Indians and their attitudes toward television. This work has been highly quoted; first, because of the success of Mander's "Four Arguments Against Television" and second, because little has been written about Indians and their attitudes about TV. In the mid 1980's Mander visited several Dene villages in the Pacific Northwest to conduct television workshops, sponsored by the Native Women's Association. His work (published in 1991) "In Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of Indian Nations" concluded that television is destructive to Native cultures. The destruction is caused when Indian experiences of the world are mediated by television; colonizing the villagers (especially children) with Western ideology and culture. His findings--that Indians are anti-television--were based on interviews conducted during workshops in several villages in Canada and Alaska.
Mander extended his anti-television ideology into the world of computer networking, finding that computer communication technology (like TV) "should be" resisted by Native communities in order to protect their culture. Few Native voices are actually found in this work, yet one is left with the feeling that Indians are still resisting the onset of Western culture, as transmitted to them by telecommunications. Mander's message was very clear: Communication technology brings social change (technological determinism) and the change is bad. Indians, like the rest of the population, should burn their TV's.
"In Absence of the Sacred" had several weaknesses. Mander's work reported on the attitudes of Natives in one remote rural villages of the Pacific Northwest. The methodology was ethnographic in nature and his conclusions were based solely on statements from a self selected group of community members. Further, his own anti-television ideology biases the discussions from which his conclusions were drawn. Mander seems to have suffered from the rather romantic notion, popularized in our history of the media, that Indians do not wish to see their culture change.
Regardless, he did report negative attitudes as they were expressed by community informants. It is now ten years later and we wonder what they are saying about TV today. Have they uncritically accepted TV in an era marked by the rest of society complaining bitterly about TV? Are they, like the rest of us, now expressing similar fears about the Internet? Do all Indians feel about TV as those in Mander's study did?
In 1994 the Corporation for Public Broadcasting commissioned a study that utilized the focus group as its methodology: "American Indian Attitudes Toward Television." Noteworthy in this report was the decision to categorize the Indian population based on place of residence: urban (51% of all AI/ANs live in cities), rural (27% of all AI/AN's live in the country), and reservation (22% of all Native people live on reservations). Baldwin, the principle investigator, believed that place of residency was a better predictor of attitudes toward telecommunications than tribal affiliation. Furthermore, he required that subjects selected for the focus panels be "individuals known by the Indian community to be Indian." Operationalized, this meant that the sponsoring tribal organization recruited a gender-mixed cross-section of the community for each of the three focus groups.
By selecting panelists based on a "community definition of being Indian", the study was able to control for the "wannabe" factor. The "wannabe factor" (well understood in Indian country) reflects an insider's knowledge of the tremendous cultural diversity in Indian identity, even within a single tribe, as discussed later in this paper.
The results detailed for the first time what many of us already suspected from personal experience: television viewing is an important part of most American Indian households. The importance of television and how it was viewed within the Native households varied between the three sites primarily as a function of access. The more channels available, the more time the TV was left on or watched.
For example, the urban group watched more television, left it running longer, and screened their children's viewing less than the reservation group. Such behavioral differences may be associated with cultural values, family structure, and occupational patterns of the adults. Zuni people (the reservation focus group and most like Mander's sample), did not seem to value television as much as the rural and city groups. Such differences could be accounted for by access: Zuni received only two channels via antenna with half of their tribe linked (recently) to a cable television network serving the HUD housing complex. One will expect their viewing times to increase, becoming more like the urban sample.
The focus panels collectively expressed their dismay at how Indian people are typically portrayed on television. Past stereotypes, they said, have been replaced by "politically correct" positive stereotypes, but stereotypes nonetheless. Panelists were ambivalent about the new stereotype, particularly when used in advertising. For example, the use of the "noble savage" image to sell cars was disturbing to most, yet when such images were used to promote tourism, attitudes became polarized, with a minority of the panel members expressing the opinion that if the stereotype helped Indians to make a living, it was okay.
Panelists concluded by asking the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for more Indian programming, regardless of topic or tribe. They expressed a desire to know more about themselves and other Native people and culture. They believed that TV could provide that. Such programs, they said, should have significant Indian input in order to maintain their authenticity.
Participants in the study were asked about their attitudes toward computers and the Internet, although these questions were beyond the scope of the contract. Where several of the urban and rural residents had access to the net, they had not developed an understanding of how computers networks might have "programming content" about Indians. None of those in the reservation panel had computers and consequently had formed no opinions concerning access and content as they had with television.
It would seem that in any ways Mander is right. The social change caused by television is disturbing to the community, but in time the technology colonizes the experiences of the viewer with the values of those who control the media. Resistance to the technology is soon replaced by a desire for more access. More access leads to faster social change. Baldwin's work, which reports on how TV is used and perceived by a broader group of American Indians in the 1990's, concluded that TV is an important part of most AI/AN lives. Attitudes toward the Internet are now beginning to form and the next section is a discussion about Indians and computers: the next round of communication technology to influence Native culture and identity.
Although little has been written about AI/AN attitudes toward traditional communication media, even less has been written about Native attitudes toward computers or network information systems. Educators in Alaska and Canada reported in the 1980's about how email was being used by teachers for long-distance education. These articles focused on the technology and what it could do rather than on the attitudes or educational effectiveness. The focus in the professional and scientific literature was on the potential for computer technology to improve teaching and learning for Native students in culturally appropriate manner.
In the 1980's there were several publications that suggesting that culture influenced how the brain processed information. Citations generally included Sperry's (1975) "Left Brain Right Brain" article or Ornstein's (1978) "Split and Whole Brain" publication. These works and others (Cattey, 1980; Ross, 1982) suggested that hemispheric preference is influenced by cultural background. It was hypothesized that by emphasizing particular beliefs and activities, one hemisphere is developed to a greater extent than the other. The values and practices of the Euro-American majority suggested to these researchers that the left hemisphere processing is preferred. The left brain is specialized in linear sequential information processing and abstract thinking. American Indians, concluded Cattey (1980), have a culture that is based on right hemisphere dominance. The right hemisphere appears to specialize in relational, simultaneous information processing and holistic thinking. Researchers would compare a brain "wired" for seeking nonlinear relationships to the multimedia hypertext on the world wide web.
Right hemisphere dominance, combined with learning through cooperative groups, story telling, and a need for multi-sensory input suggested to educators that for Indian learners, traditional classrooms were ill-conceived. Evidence suggested that Native learners are reluctant to fail or appear clumsy in public, reluctant to compete when loss is probable, and will not compete with members of their inner group. Success in the traditional classroom, based on competition and manipulation of othersm, creates a social situation that is defined by many traditional native people as "interpersonally coercive".
From the same body of literature, educators and social scientists believed that the early hardware and software platforms were culturally inappropriate for the traditional Native users. The failure of American Indians to adopt computer communication during the 1980's was arguably at the interface level, but a better explanation is that a culturally inappropriate teaching setting had been created for learning how to compute. This setting was viewed (from the Indian perspective) as coercive, competitive, with a high probability of failure in a public venue.
Most NIS systems at the time were linear and hierarchical in nature: text-based MS-DOS or UNIX operating systems. Network retrieval tools such as gopher, ftp, archie, etc. were similarly "line prompt" text-based linear systems. Such interfaces, according to the theories cited above, were inimical to Native users. As noted by Carlson "preliterate cultures actively construct meaning from all sensual stimuli, whereas literate cultures undergo a distortion in the ration of the senses". In stressing the importance of print, it was theorized that network information systems failed at the interface for Native users. Were AI/AN bound to fail with computers, waiting for the advent of the multimedia, graphic interface? Or is the entire idea of "culturally appropriate interfaces" just an expression of scientific racism, used in a Marxist manner to validate social policies that have been used to create "information poor" native communities? Evidence today suggests that the graphic interface makes a computer more easy to use for almost everyone, and the multimedia interface even more so, regardless of race or ethnicity of the end user. Social class and access issues continue to play a more important role as barriers to Indian use of computers than cognitive processing characteristics.
In a discussion about learning styles, culture, and the adoption of network information systems by American Indians, one wonders if Indians are really "that different" than the dominant culture on this issue. Social class, defined by such variables as income and education as well as geographic location may be the real predictors in such a social equation. The answer to this is complicated even more by how one defines an "Indian". For example, there are at least three ways in which someone may construct an Indian identity for themselves: (1) self identification (you simply say you are Indian), (2) the federal definition - 1/4 degree of Indian blood and a recognized member of a recognized tribe- or (3) a tribal or community definition. Each tribe has the right to determine who its members are and this may be independent of blood quantum or lineal descent! To complicate this even further, some tribes are recognized as tribes (legally) by the Federal Government, some by only a State Government, and some tribes are not recognized at all! One may be "Indian" by any of these definitional categories, yet vary tremendously (once again) in terms of acculturation to the norms and values of larger society or one's tribe.
A second round of articles emerged during the early 1990's that addressed telecommunication policy, particularly the access issue. Native innovators, in the sense used by Everett Rogers (1995), "found each other" within the listservs and newsgroups of the Internet. At locations such as NATIVE-L or within the chat rooms of on-line communities such as Big Sky Telegraph and ENAN, people congregated to talk about Indians and Indian issues. A few of these people were actually Natives! The Native innovators, as predicted by Roger's diffusion theory, were government workers or educators who had easy access to the new technology and could use it with little personal or financial risk.
From these individuals came a set of influential works such as "Networking the Nations: Information Policy and the Emerging Indian Network Marketplace" (Baldwin, 1992), and Jim May's "Technological Needs in Indian America: Joining the Information Age" These authors (and others) described an emerging economy of network information systems (NIS) that would serve the information needs of Native people in the very near future.
Baldwin and May argued that the single issue of access explained the low participation rates of AI/AN's on the network, not learning styles, brain processing, or other cultural attributes. Native people, especially in rural and reservation locations, have less telephones per capita than the general population, less access to television, less access to libraries- in general less access to information. In 1992, of the 550 federally recognized tribal governments, not one had an official on-line presence, and of the 30 or so tribally controlled colleges, none were present on the net. In developing the National Information Infrastructure, Indian country had been bypassed.
American Indian themes and databases emerged on the Internet during the electronic frontier era, circa 1988. At the time, Baldwin noted that, given the problematic nature of Indian identity in "real life" (RL), it was quite likely that "none of the on-line organizations were Indian owned or operated" (Networking the Nations, p. 50). The listservs of the Internet, telephone linked bulletin board systems, and special interest groups (SIG's) on the Well and American On-Line were entirely non-Indian owned and managed. Baldwin determined (through private email and telephone conversations) that there were a number of "real" American Indians and Alaskan Natives present on the networks, but unorganized and overwhelmed by wannabes (pronounced "want-to-be").
Typically, Native innovators were found to be silent observers of electronic conversations about themselves; a form of social behavior not uncommon to "newbies" (new arrivals) in the electronic communities of the net. The social habit of "lurking" on-line may have been reinforced by the Native cultural practice of observing new social situations quietly until an appropriate role either emerges or is defined by them. To illustrate this, in one email exchange between two Indian children on ENAN, a teenager at a boarding school emails: "I am sorry to bother you like this without an introduction, but if I don't talk with someone over the computer my teacher will take away points from me." (personal communication).
From within the social network of Native innovators emerged a strategy to lobby for programs that would increase Indian access to the "Information Superhighway". The National Science Foundation was targeted in the lobbying effort, as were the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Department of Commerce, and private foundations. However, it was well understood by the innovators that even with appropriate funding, NIS projects were doomed to failure without support from within the Indian community. Changing social policy at the national level while at the same time rallying support for accepting the network services at the community level best describe the political strategy of the native innovators: the "Internet Indians".
In Everett Roger's terms, early adopters are the second stage of opinion leaders to use and promote an innovation as it diffuses through a social network. When applied to this issue, early adopters provide the grassroots support for the intervention program that moves the innovation over to the early majority. In the past, intervention programs have failed in Indian communities due to the lack of local input and acceptance. Opinion leaders are important in getting a program accepted. In planning for community participation in such systemic change, there are cultural differences in how one defines a "leader" in many traditional Native communities. Opinion leaders are not always the "point person" or the person with a particular title in a community institution.
In respect to computers and Native communities, during the 1980's tribal governments, schools, and tribally controlled colleges were victimized by a round of "electronic carpetbagging" that left them with outdated computers and orphaned software. As with the Department of Education's "Star Schools" program, grant writers found it expedient to name one or more Indian tribes as collaborating in the project. This netted them "points" in the competitive review process, but when equipment arrived at the tribe, there was no one there to receive it, much less install it and participate in network activities. Equipment came from programs that had no provisions for training and had ill-conceived understandings about culturally appropriate pedagogy or the politics of AI/AN community institutions.
In 1991 we had the first example of Congress assuming its trust responsibility in relationship to telecommunications and Indian education. A $250,000 appropriation was provided for the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) to study and develop a satellite communication network for the purpose of sharing information and coursework between the tribally controlled colleges. Additional funding was to follow, but the project was not funded in late-1995 due to the "discovered" fact that content was missing from the network. The fact was, Native schools did not have programming to share with each other. Without content, the network could only deliver programming from non-Indian educational networks (such as NUTN). In this case, the AIHEC program failed, not because the technology did not work, not because of learning styles, not because of access issues, but because at the community or institutional level there was no infrastructure to develop "native content" that could compete with non-Native products.
As the 90's progressed, lobbying had some success at both the Federal and community level. Projects and studies were funded. Congress took an interest in AI/AN issues and the Internet when Daniel Inoye requested that the Office of Technology Assessment commission a study. The National Science Foundation, primary funder of the "National Information Infrastructure" created several funding venues for American Indians that were based on some of the recommendations from "The First Native American Telecommunication Forum". At the same time the Bureau of Indian Affairs Education Department funded ENAN, the Electronic Native American Network and the Kellogg Foundation funded the Cradleboard Project and the American Indian Higher Education Initiative. The Commerce Department funded the TIIAP program and targeted native communities for special assistance. All of these projects share the distinction of being created as a result of the lobbying efforts of the early innovators. Most funding venues were designed to move the technology into the hands of selected community opinion leaders.
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 instance 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 TV or listening to the radio is said to influence cultural change and self-concepts. Native communication professionals, such as the members of the Native American Journalists Association (NAJA) or Native American Public Telecommunications (NAPT) 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 presents itself as the latest chapter in the history of Native assimilation of communication technology and the subsequent redefinition of Native values, beliefs, and identity.
What follows is a review of two landmark need studies documenting the telecommunication needs of American Indians.
Two landmark studies were published in 1993 and 1995. Taken together, they present a Native perspective and a nonnative view on the issues of access, content, and need-network information systems and AI/ANs. The first study described below was done by Americans for Indian Opportunity under contract with the National Science Foundation. The second study was done for Congress by the Office of Technology Assessment.
With funding from the National Science Foundation, the First Native American Telecommunications Forum convened in Denver, December 1993. 18 Native American telecommunication-related organizations and 12 supporting organizations set a precedent by organizing the most comprehensive group of Indians ever to have addressed the broad spectrum of Native American telecommunication needs. Utilizing the focus group "as a talking circle" and a modified Delphi technique, the study reported that participants in the forum agreed that:
(Americans for Indian Opportunity, p.4.)
NSF has since then funded several projects that addressed the findings from the above study. The most significant of those projects is the National Indian Telecommunications Institute (NITI) which will be reviewed below.
The second study, "Telecommunication Technology and Native Americans" (1995)
was conducted by the Office of Technology Assessment on behalf of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. This appears to be the first and only federal report on Native telecommunications and remains as the most comprehensive study to date that describes the status of AI/AN telecommunications. The finding of this study can be summarized as:
We must conclude from these two contrasting studies that there is now Federal recognition of the problem and that community leaders and other Native opinion leaders are prepared to bring this technology home.
Numerous government and private funding sources have stepped forward to address the telecommunication needs of Native people. Although these projects (for the most) have operated for the most part independent of each other. The following sections are a review of the best intervention programs currently in operation (known to the researcher) and that have some information concerning their success that the principle investigators are willing to share.
The National Indian Telecommunications Institute is a Native-founded and run organization dedicated to using the power of electronic technologies to provide American Indian and Alaskan Native communities with extensive educational tools, equal opportunity and a strong voice in self-determination. NITI was funded in part by the National Science Foundation.
NITI's mission, in their words, "is to develop technological infrastructure and culturally sensitive applications" (http://www.niti.org) for several different American Indian populations in the United States. They have defined one target group as twelve American Indian communities and will work with them over a three year period to develop curriculum and public databases. NITI provides plain old telephone system (POTS) connectivity via a 1-800 line for those associates who do not have a local Internet provider. They support community network activities on their server when necessary. They provide on- and off-site training, teacher support and curriculum development .
According to their documentation, they provide Internet training for faculty and administration of the five North Dakota Tribal Colleges. They also provide Internet training for teachers in Alaska and the High Plains RSI, at both the K-12 grade levels and the Tribal College levels, as part of the National Science Foundation's Rural Systemic Initiatives Program. NITI has solicited corporate sponsors, which include the Microsoft Corporation and New Mexico Technet. NITI's National Science Foundations grants are supported under several NSF programs, including Networking for Infrastructure in Education, the Connections Programs, and Rural Systems Initiatives Programs.
Their goals are to employ advanced technology to serve American Indians and Alaska Natives in the areas of education, economic development, language and cultural preservation, tribal policy issues and self-determination. Advanced technology is defined by NITI in terms of what they offer to Native communities:
The intervention model is based on hands-on training for Indian community members serving in educational or governmental institutions. Network information systems may be tailored specifically for the groups that trained either on location or at the NITI training facility.
The evaluation process has not yet begun; however, what we can discover from this is that there will be selected site visits where training occurred. Open-ended interviews will be used and the evaluators have the intent of being aware that "unintended outcomes" may have resulted from the training. There is an intent to use post-training questionnaires, but the researchers also intend to measure changes that may have occurred in the larger community as a result of increased access to the Internet. It is not clear how the trainees are selected or what role they play in the community. If the pattern suggested above holds true, we can expect that trainees are educators and other leaders of opinion in their communities.
Dr. Grayson Noley, principle evaluator, estimates that findings from the evaluation will not be available until late winter of 1998. Dr. Noley was not willing to speculate about the possible conclusions.
The ENAN Project was funded by the BIA Office of Indian Education with support from the Tandy Corporation seven years ago. Historically, the ENAN Project was the first computer network devoted to American Indian Education and has been called the "Grandfather of Indian Networking" by those close to the project. ENAN has evolved from a small pilot project designed to network Western New Mexico and Eastern Arizona BIA/OIEP schools to become "a far-reaching network of teachers, students, administrators and concerned parents with one goal in mind: to improve the education of all American Indian children" (quote from ENAN WWW site).
From its inception (as the Eastern Navajo Area Network), ENAN was designed to
foster communication between BIA/OIEP teachers, students and administrators. It is still doing that but has expanded its role in several directions. ENAN will begin ISDN service to selected schools for the purpose of providing TCP/IP connection to reservation sites that could otherwise not afford such service. ENAN now supplies full Internet connection to more than 100 BIA/OIEP schools, with SLIP service available on demand. From a four-telephone-line BBS, ENAN has become a full fledged Internet Service Provider (ISP).
Goals for the project include enrichment of math and science curriculum in BIA/OIEP schools, technological support for BIA/OIEP schools, development and delivery of on-line coursework (for teacher certification), and utilization of networking technologies to link BIA/OIEP's teachers, students and administrators with the rest of the on-line world.
The ENAN model originated as a BBS system linked to four 1-800 telephone lines. ENAN then went about creating an on-line Community of Indian educators. The original "inhabitants" of the BBS were primarily K-12 administrators and, to a lesser extent, a handful of classroom teachers and a few students. The ENAN staff publicized the BBS through mailings, conference presentations, and face-to-face demonstrations of the system in schools throughout the region. Interest continued to grow.
Participation remained low for several years. It was an access and population density issue: School teachers and students did not have telephone lines in their classrooms; thus, connectivity was restricted to those who had a phone line available at the school or at home. Restricted connectivity lowered the overall size of the on-line population; thus, little information of use to end users was on the system. Further, the restricted size of the on-line community prevented the level of BIA officials in Washington and a few select leaders in Indian education across the country became the primary "residents" of this developing on-line Community. Connectivity was itself was restricted to 2400 baud (similar to many of today's Alaskan villages) and the ENAN interface was the "line prompt" display typical of MS-DOS computers.
Frank Field, Dean of Education and ENAN Project Director, noted that there had never been a "formal evaluation" of the ENAN project. The failures and successes of the project have been visible to the electronic community's participants and ENAN administrators. As such, it has been an continual process of hardware and software upgrades, training and re-training for the end users, and an evolution toward becoming a full Internet service provider with a multimedia graphical interface.
ENAN has clearly stated goals: "enrichment of math and science curriculum in BIA/OIEP schools, technological support for BIA/OIEP schools, development and delivery of on-line coursework (for teacher certification), and utilization of networking technologies to link BIA/OIEP's teachers, students and administrators with the rest of the on-line world. According to Field, there has never been a formal evaluation to see if these goals have been met. This is due to the continued demand on the program to evolve with new technologies (from BBS to WWW server), provide more services (from 1-800 telephone dial up to IP services), increasing demands to provide outreach services to schools hard strapped to find money for their classroom educators to travel to campus to train in the ENAN training room. Little time or funding remains for evaluation studies. Field notes that there is certainly a need for such an evaluation, but until a graduate student can be found (who has the time or inclination), there is not likely to be the kind of performance review to see how well ENAN is meeting its stated goals.
The early failure of the program to reach a broader base of participants (users) was understood to be basically one of access. Field noted "that in terms of reaching administrators, the early ENAN could be judged as a success" (personal communication) . BIA school administrators had higher levels of computer literacy and easy access to telephone connectivity. Again we see support for Roger's theory that early innovators have easy access to the resources necessary to "risk" innovation. These two factors (teleliteracy and access) increased network participation rates in that group of end-users. However, the small number of users kept the level of social interaction in the BBS-based community below a threshold of information exchange that would be socially rewarding for most end users, especially children and teachers who were also intended to be benefactors of the network.
ENAN addressed this problem by upgrading the hardware and software platform of their "on-line community" to include the now familiar graphic interface of the WWW. In terms of access, ENAN has evolved to become an ISP for the communities it serves. In terms of training, the ENAN Training Room currently has 12 workstations for computer-based instruction or computer-assisted instruction. From this site, ENAN can train 24 users on the use of Internet tools.
The training and access issues have not gone away, but continue to evolve. ENAN staff now note that regional schools are generally strapped for funds and it is increasingly difficult for participating institutions to fund travel and release time for teachers to attend training. Gene Lot, ENAN Project Coordinator, travels extensively in the region to provide the hands-on personal training that many educators require in order to become motivated to master the technology.
Changing the habits of information use in a target population of Indian educators has been accomplished by using the "On-Line Community" model and then responding to end-user demands for improved connectivity and teleliteracy training.
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation was established in 1930 "to help people help themselves through the practical application of knowledge and resources to improve their quality of life and that of future generations." As a private grant making organization, it provides seed money to organizations and institutions that have identified problems and designed constructive action programs aimed at solutions.
Most Foundation grants are awarded in the areas of youth, leadership, philanthropy, and volunteerism. Such grants have been awarded in the Great Lakes area for community-based health services, higher education, food systems, rural development, water resources, and, in Michigan, for economic development. Programming priorities concentrate grants in the United States, Latin America and Caribbean, and southern Africa.
As such, they have funded a number of projects in Indian country designed to improve access to electronic resources. During the past two years Kellogg has committed to expending a significant amount of funding to improve Indian Education (primarily at the 30 or so Indian colleges). This initiative has a strong technology component. Two programs have emerged at the Foundation which may serve as exemplars in stimulating electronic information-seeking behavior in Indian professionals. Each of the programs, the Indian Higher Education Initiative and the Cradleboard Project, have evaluation designs.
The Cradleboard Project is a curriculum development and delivery project . Directed by Dr. Buffy Sainte-Marie, this project is developing an on-line community of educators and students who will follow a hypermedia curriculum about Indian social studies, science, music and art. Web-based databases and material will be supplemented by an "Internet aware" CD-ROM. The Five pilot sites that were selected include: Mohawk (New York), Ojibwe (Minnesota), Lakota (South Dakota), and two sites in the Northwest region: Puyallup (Washington State), and Cree (Montana: Includes Rocky Boy School, Kula School, and Stonechild Tribal College). These sites are to be electronically linked to non-Indian partner schools. It is believed that by including real Indians in the process of learning about Indians, the children and teachers participating in the project will have greater learning gains and find the experience more satisfying. It is also believed that Native participants will benefit from the project through increased understanding of their own culture as well has higher levels of self-esteem.
End-user learning experiences are enhanced by a CD-ROM which runs on the desktop computer at the pilot site. The CD-ROM supports video and audio files that might otherwise interfere with the interactive components of the curriculum delivery due to lengthy download times (at 28.8 baud). The Project Director is considering streaming audio and video technology at this time, but she has not decided if the technology can be mastered in time for this year's curriculum activities.
The intervention model is based on the "on-line learning community" connected by the plain old telephone system (POTS) . Once again we find that the model targets educators, administrators, and community members who are clearly opinion leaders willing to experiment. These individuals may dial in to an Internet web server that supports an Indian learning community metaphor. The curriculum and associated technology will be tested on the pilot sites listed above, evaluated, and then delivered to the complete list of sites found in the appendix. Of interest to the NN/LM study are those schools in the Northwest which include: Stone Child College, Box Elder, MT; Hill Tahola Public School, Tahola, WA; Grays Harbor Muckleshoot Tribal School, Auburn, WA; and King Boston Harbor Public School, Olympia, WA. This model is exemplary in the early groundwork that was used to identify schools with the appropriate infrastructure to support the local contact: typically a classroom school teacher. By involving a team of community members, the Cradleboard project theorizes that a combination of local face-to-face support and asynchronous on-line peer groups will keep the level of access to their Networked Information System (NIS) high.
This is one of the few teleliteracy projects that has an evaluation component tied to it. In this case, the evaluator, Candace Fleming, has conducted mailed surveys and telephone interviews to identify the barriers that educators and students might have to using the Cradleboard curriculum and technology. It is intended that post-project findings can correlate the level of access and activity on the NIS with the social facts of the site participants and their sponsoring school systems. The findings for the pilot schools in the Northwest region have been requested and can be included in this paper by February.
There are several initiatives within the Indian Health Service (IHS) that will have an impact on how Native health care practitioners access IHS information. First, the general policy of allowing tribes under self-determination to manage their own health funding will alter their relationship between the IHS, the tribe, and the native client. The Indian Health Service has a service population numbering about 1.21 million (in 1990). This is about 62 percent of the total American Indian population. The National Research Council (NRC) found that the IHS had facilities that are well-suited to serve rural populations at no cost to patients, but access (due to geographic isolation and budgetary issues) may be difficult to overcome as the population continues to grow. The implications for Telemedicine and access to on-line medical information are essentially the same: high speed connectivity is needed and is of particular importance to the more rural isolated health care centers. The issues of training and behavioral rewards for developing new information seeking behaviors (i.e. teleliteracy) have not been addressed to any significant degree in any of the literature related to Indian Health professionals.
Three years ago, IHS used a small, unreliable BBS sporadically connected to FedWorld (a 1-800 one-stop-shop for federal data on-line). Today the IHS sports a new web page and appears to have developed an internal initiative to develop it. Other IHS groups, for example the Northwest Area Indian Health Board, have been active in soliciting external funding from sources like the Commerce Department's TIIAP Program. This program particularly deserves a degree of consideration due to its target population and similar goals as the NN/LM project.
The most recent NIS intervention project in Indian country is the Alaska Telemedicine Project. It is of special interest to this project due to its target population (over half of rural residents of Alaska are AI/AN). The Indian Health Service is part of this project and it is well funded in Alaska; in fact, it is better funded than the IHS in the lower states. IHS hospitals are regionally funded in the larger native villages. In the small villages there are "health aides" who are trained for about 12 weeks. These individuals are the direct health care providers who do diagnosis and treatment, often proceeding in their work under the long-distance direction (synchronous and asynchronous communication ) from Anchorage based doctors.
Four years ago, Dr. Fred Pierce (UA-Anchorage) was assigned, as part of his administrative duties at UA-Anchorage, "to figure out what telemedicine meant". The result of that task became the Alaska Telemedicine Project, an official consortium of health care and telecommunication providers in Alaska who are concerned with what they describe in Alaska as being a "Third World environment that has a 1960's hardware infrastructure" (personal communication with Fred Pierce).
During this period of time, Pierce wrote a grant to the National Library of Medicine to evaluate Telemedicine in Alaska. The contract with the ??? created several projects. What kind of information would such an evaluation need to contain?
Thus began the Alaska Telemedicine Project. There were three different funding sources: military, private, and the Indian Health Service. Curiously, today in Alaska the Native Health Corporations get the receive the federal funding for Native health care and this Alaskan Native organization subcontracts funding to the Indian Health Service. The Native Health Corporations now wish to keep community members at home rather than sending them to Anchorage. Pierce notes that telemedicine is really about improving the health care to rural people, over half of which in Alaska are natives.
The goal is to move medical information to the desktop of the health practitioner in (20) communities. To do so will break down professional isolation which some feel is the greatest cause of "drop-outs". By creating a telemedicine network, the health care professionals may find support from others like themselves. To create such a network, the clinical health aides need training.
The Alaska Telemedicine Project is based on training and interconnecting the health care professionals in the Native villages to a 2400 baud communication network. The project is even building some of the machines that support this network. In Alaska, bandwidth is precious and if the interface is graphic intensive, the system bogs down. Thus, many of the innovations in CMC that have fostered explosive growth are simply not available to the Alaskan villagers who are connected by satellite. Forget video teleconferencing and the heavy graphics: Medline, Grateful Med, etc. are useful only as text-based activities.
The project is now forming partnerships with telecommunication venders and Internet Service Providers, all of which have a stake in developing the new "electronic frontier" of the undeveloped connectivity of Alaska.
The evaluation model has four components:
It will be in the first quarter of 1998 that preliminary findings will appear. Subjective evaluation of the program, in the context of increasing the use of the network by the field practitioners, has revolved around (1) creating the sense of a professional community via the listservs and (2) connecting with each other via the face-to-face training sessions.
Of the studies reviewed in this paper, the common pattern of NIS intervention strategies that appear to be successful in Indian country are:
The literature suggests that a multimedia graphics-oriented interface is more appropriate for the Native learning style, but this is likely to be true for all users of computers, not just Native people. In rural sites where health practitioners work with very poor connectivity, such as the villages in Alaska and reservations in the Northwest, special thought must be given to graphically-intense interfaces that are slow to download and run the risk of lost connectivity and subsequent rejection of the technology.
The NN/LM should consider working closely with several of the existing projects that have an interest in telecommunication outreach to Native populations. This would include the Alaskan Telemedicine Cooperative, Northwest Portland Area Health Board and the Indian Health Service's new technology initiative.
The multiplicity of texts (sound, video, pictures, and traditional print) available on the Internet permit a far greater range in how people "socially create and identify themselves" (in conversation with oneself as well as with others, part of the social creation of knowledge). Internet users have a vast choice of other social realities, such as lurking undeclared. Ethnic fraud and wholesale cultural appropriation of native texts exist side-by-side with authentic native knowledge networks. Native scholars worry about this. We know how the last round of community technology, as represented by TV, was able to take our culture and then give it back to us as stereotypical images. With the Internet today, we wonder if the new paradigm of sociomedia can help us become active creators in the production of texts that describe who we and our communities are or will be in the 21st Century.
An extensive list of tribal organizations and addresses may be found in the appendix of this paper. This database is one of several lists that may serve to assist in identifying individuals and organizations useful to this project.
Alaska Public Utilities Commission. (1996) Alaska 2001 Final Report. AUPC 1016 West 6th Ave.Anchorage, Alaska 99501. http://www.alaska.net/~apuc/contents.htm
American Indian Higher Education Consortium. (1993) Year One Final Report and Recommendations. The AIHEC Distance Learning Network.
Americans for Indian Opportunity. (1993) First Native American Telecommunications Forum: Final Report. AIO, 681 Juniper Hill Road, Bernalillo, NM 87004. December.
Baldwin, George D. (1992) Networking the Nations: Information Policy and the Emerging Indian Network Marketplace. Journal of Navaho Education. Vol IX, No. 2, pp. 47-53. Winter.
Baldwin, George D. (1994) American Indian Attitudes Toward Television. Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Washington, D.C.
Baldwin, George D. (1995) "Public Access to the Internets: American Indian and Alaskan Native Policy Issues". Published in "Public Policy and Public Access to the Internet", edit. Brian Kahin. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University; McGraw-Hill.
Barrett, Edward. (1995) "Sociomedia: Multimedia, hypermedia, and the Social Construction of Knowledge. MIT Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Brown, D.B. (1990) "Learning Styles and Native Americans." Journal of American Indian Education, 2-5.
May, Jim. (1992) "Technological Needs in Indian America: Joining the Information Age," Journal of Navajo Education, Winter 1992.
National Research Council. (1994) Changing Numbers, Changing Needs: American Indian Demography and Public Health. 2101 Constitution Avenue N.W., Washington D.C. 20418
Ornstein, R. (1978) "Split and Whole Brain". Human Nature.
Ross, C.A. (1982) "Brain hemispheric Functions and the Native American." Journal o f American Indian Education, 2-5.
Resta, Paul. (1992) National Museum of the American Indian: Off-Site Technology Applications. National Museum of the American Indian, The Smithsonian. Washington, DC.
Sperry, R.W. (1975) "Left-Brain, Right-Brain. Saturday Review, 30-33.
Stevens, Ted (Theodore F.) (1994) Telemedicine technology. Journal of Alaska Medicine v. 36, no. 2 (Apr/June) pp.116-17.
Thomas, E. Kottke, Leonard Little Finger, Mary Alice Trapp, and Laurel Panser. (1995) "The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation / May Clinic / NASA Telemedicine Project: A Feasibility Study, "abstract, Second International Conference on the Medical Aspects of Telemedicine and Second Annual Mayo Telemedicine Symposium, Apr. 6-7.
Turkle, Sherry, and Seymour Papert. (1990). "Epistemological Pluralism: Styles and Voices Within the Computer Culture." SIGNS: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 16: 128-157.
U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment. (1995) Telecommunications Technology and Native Americans: Opportunities and Challenges. OTA-ITC-621 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, August.
U.S. Department of Commerce. (1993) We the First Americans. Economics and Statistics Administration, Bureau of the Census. September.
The 1990 census counted 1,878,285 American Indians, 57,152 Eskimos, and 23,797 Aleuts. The number - nearly 2 million - represented an increase of 38 percent over the 1980 total. Census Bureau estimates and projections suggest that by July 1, 1994, the American Indian, Eskimo, and Aleut population numbered 2.2 million, and that it will reach 4.3 million - just over 1 percent of the population -- by 2050. Nearly one-half of the American Indian population lived in the West in 1990, 29 percent in the South, 17 percent in the Midwest, and 6 percent in the Northeast (Bureau of the Census, 1993). Alaska ranks 5th with 86,000 native people and Washington ranks 6th with 81,000.
39 percent of the American Indian (including Eskimo and Aleut) population was under 20 years old in 1990 compared with 29 percent of the Nation's total population. It is a young population: the median age is 26 years and this is considerably lower that the U.S. median age of 33.
The growth in the American Indian, Eskimo, and Aleut population cannot be attributed to natural increase. A number of factors have been suggested to explain the increase. First there have been significant improvements in the way the Census Bureau counts people on reservations, trust lands, and in Alaska Native villages. Secondly, there is high marital exogamy in the Native population and when this is combined with aggressive outreach and promotion campaigns , many of mixed Indian and non-Indian heritage self identify in the enumeration process as Indian. The remarkable growth (from 1980 to 1990) was a continuation of a trend that began in the 1950's.
As the 2000 Census nears, projecting the size of the American Indian and Alaskan Native population becomes problematic. Indians have self-identified for some time and this has clearly lead to remarkable population increases. Currently, there is debate about the inclusion of a "Multiracial" category under the racial self-identification section of the census survey. Pretrials of the multi-racial category by the U.S. Bureau of the Census found that for mixed ancestry (Anglo and Indian) subjects, a significant number who had been identifying as "Indian" chose "multi-racial" when offered that selection. If the multiracial category is included on the census survey in 2000 many predict that there will be a significant "drop" in the American Indian and Alaskan Native population.
For the importance of this paper, if is best to use the working definition of "Indian" as "a recognized member of a recognized tribe". Federally recognized tribes in the Northwest region have been listed (See Appendix #_____). Non-federally recognized tribes for each state in the Northwest region have also been listed (see Appendix #____).
The Alaska Native population includes Eskimos, American Indians, and Aleuts living in Alaska. The growth of the Alaska Native population was relatively slow from 1880 to 1950. However, similar to the general population of American Indians, from 1950 to 1990 the population increased by 153%, numbering 85,698 in 1990. More than half were Eskimos, but a substantial number were American Indians (36%) and about 12% Aleuts.
The two main Eskimo groups in Alaska, Inupiat and Yupik, are distinguished by their language and geographic location. The former live in the north and northwest parts of Alaska and speak Inupiaq, while the latter live in the south and southwest and speak Yupik. Enumeration is best accounted for by village, however there is an database produced by the U.S. Census Department that would allow for separation of the two populations.
The American Indian tribes represented in Alaska are the Alaskan Athabaskan (11,696) in the central part of the State, the Tlingit (9,448, Tsimshian (1,653) and Haida (1,083) in the southeast. The Aleuts (10,052 ) live mainly in the Aleutian Islands.
After 1971, all of Alaska (except the Annette Islands Reserve) was divided into 12 geographically defined Alaska Native Regional Corporations. The boundaries of these regions were legally established and the corporate entities conduct business for profit. A complete list of these corporations and the communities they serve can be found in the appendix of this paper. This list should be compared to the Indian Health Service facilities that serve them.
Health Characteristics
There are difficulties in tracing demographic and public health trends in the American Indian and Alaskan Native population. These difficulties are attributable to several sources. The National Research Council found (1994) that such problems arise from (1) the relatively small proportion of the U.S. population that is American Indian; (2) American Indian residences tend to be either highly clustered in a small number of geographic areas or spread lightly over a large geographic areas, (3) the high rate of marital exogamy; and (4) evolving trends in self-identifying (as Indian or non-Indian) within the population.
The growth in Indian population, discussed in the above section is accounted for by the increasing number of individuals who (1) self-identify as Indian, 2) the relatively high fertility rates within that population and (3) Indian infant mortality rates that have improved over the past 15 years. The death rates for American Indian youth and young adults remains high. American Indians have experienced a decline in infectious diseases, an increase in chronic diseases, and high levels of mortality due to violence, accidents, and alcohol and drug abuse.
The Indian Health Service (IHS) has a service population numbering about 1.21 million (in 1990). This is about 62 percent of the total American Indian population. The NRC found that the Indian Health Service had facilities that are well-suited to serve rural populations at no cost to patients, but access due to geographic isolation and budgetary issues may be difficult to overcome as the population continues to grow.
The implications for Telemedicine and access to on-line medical information are essentially the same: High speed connectivity is needed and this is of particular importance to the more rural isolated health care centers. The issues of training and behavioral rewards for developing new information seeking behaviors (i.e. teleliteracy) have not been addressed to any significant degree in any of the literature related to Indian Health professionals.
AHTNA, Inc.
PO Box 649
Glenallen, AK 99588
907-822-3476
ALEUT Corporation
4000 Old Seward Highway, Suite 300
Anchorage, AK 99503
907-576-4300
ARCTIC SLOPE REGIONAL CORPORATION
P.O. Box 129
Barrow, AK 99273
907-852-8633
BERING STRAITS NATIVE CORPORATION
PO Box 1009
Nome, AK 99762
907-443-5252
BRISTOL BAY NATIVE CORPORATION
PO Box 3310
Dillingham, AK 99576
907-443-5252
CALISTA CORPORATION
601 West 5th Avenue. Ste 200
Anchorage, AK 99501-2225
9097-279-5516
CHUGACH ALASKA CORPORATION
34th Avenue. Ste 200
Anchorage, AK 99503-4196
COOK INLET REGION INCORPORATED
P.O. Box 93330
Anchorage, AK 99509-3330
907-274-8638
127. Chickaloon Native Village
128. Eklutna Native Village
129. Kenaitze Indian Tribe (IRA)
130. Knik Tribe
131. Ninilchik Village Traditional Council
132. Village of Salamatof
133. Seldovia Village Tribe (IRA)
134. Native Village of Tyonek (IRA)
DOYON LTD
Doyon Building
201 First Avenue
Fairbanks, AK 99701
907-452-4755
135. Alatna Village
136. Allakaket Village
137. Anvik Village
138. Village of Arctic Village
139. Beaver Village
140. Birch Creek Village
141. Chalkyitsik Village
142. Circle Native Community (IRA)
143. Village of Dot Lake
144. Native Village of Eagle (IRA)
145. Evansville Village
146. Native Village of Fort Yukon (IRA)
147. Galena Village, (aka Louden)
148. Organized Village of Grayling (IRA)(aka Holikachuk)
149. Healy Lake Village
150. Holy Cross Village
151. Hughes Village
152. Huslia Village
153. Village of Kaltag
154. Koyukuk Native Village
155. Manley Hot Springs Village
156. McGrath Native Village
157. Native Village of Minto (IRA)
158. Nenana Native Association
159. Nikolai Village
160. Northway Village
161. Nulato Village
162. Rampart Village
163. Village of Red Devil
164. Native Village of Ruby
165. Shageluk Native Village (IRA)
166. Native Village of Stevens (IRA)
167. Takotna Village
168. Native Village of Tanacross (IRA)
169. Native Village of Tanana (IRA)
170. Telida Village
171. Native Village of Tetlin (IRA)
172. Native Village of Venetie (IRA)
KONIAG, INCORPORATED
4300 B Street, Ste 407
Anchorage, AK 99503
907-561-2668
173. Akiak Native Community (IRA)
174. Native Village of Karluk (IRA)
175. Native Village of Larsen Bay
176. Village of Old Harbor
177. Native Village of Ouzinkie
178. Native Village of Port Lions
179. Shoonaq' Tribe of Kodiak
NANA REGIONAL CORPORATION, INC.
P.O. Box 49
Kotzbue, AK 99752
907-442-3301
180. Native Village of Ambler
181. Native Village of Buckland (IRA)
182. Native Village of Deering (IRA)
183. Native Village of Kiana
184. Native Village of Kivalina (IRA)
185. Native Village of Kobuk
186. Native Village of Kotzebue (IRA)
187. Native Village of Noatak (IRA)
188. Noorvik Native Community (IRA)
189. Native Village of Selawik (IRA)
190. Native Village of Shungnak (IRA)
SEALASKA CORPORATION
One Sealaska Plaza, Suite 400
Juneau, AK 99801
907-596-1512
191. Angoon Community Association (IRA)
192. Craig Community Association (IRA)
193. Craig Community Association (IRA) Chilkat Indian Village (Klukwan) (Hasines) (IRA)
194.Hydaburg Cooperative Association (IRA)
195. Organized Village of Kake (IRA)
196. Organized Village of Kasaan (IRA)
197. Ketchikan Indian Corporation (IRA)
198. Klawock Cooperative Association (IRA) Kluckwan Metlakatla
199. Petersburg Indian Association (IRA)
200. Organized Village of Saxman (IRA)
201. Sitka Tribe of Alaska (IRA)
202. Skagway Traditional Council
203. Wrangell Cooperative Association (IRA)
204. Yakutat Tlingit Tribe
205. Aukquan Traditional Council
1. Fort Hall Business Council.
2. Kootenai Tribal Council.
3. Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee.
4. Northwestern Band of Shoshoni Nation.
5. Coeur d'Alene Tribal Council.
1. Delawares of Idaho
1. Fort Belknap Community Council.
2. Northern Cheyenne Tribal Council.
3. Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.
4. Chippewa Cree Business Committee.
5. Fort Peck Tribal Executive Board.
6. Crow Tribal Council.
7. Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribal Council.
1. Little Shell Tribe of Chippewas of Montana
2. Swan Creek & Black River Chippewa
1. Siletz Tribal Council
2. Tribes of the Grande Ronde Tribal Council, Shasta, Kallapuya, Molalla, Rogue River, Umpqua), Grand Ronde
3. Confederated Tribes of Coos Lower Umpqua & Siuslaw Indians.
4. Burns-Paiute General Council.
5. Klamath General Council.
6. Confederated Tribes of Umatilla Board of Trustees
7. Coquille Indian Tribal Community, North Bend
8. Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Indians.
9. Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation, (Warm springs, Northern Paiute, Wasco)
10. Celillo Village, Columbia River Tribes
11. Klamath Reservation, (Klamath, Modoc, Yahooskin Band of Snake Indians), Chiloquin, OR
1. Upper Skagit Tribal Council.
2.Makah Tribal Council.
3. Kalispel Reservation, Usk, WA
4. Lummi Business Council.
5. Jamestown S'Klallam Tribal Council.
6. Yakama Reservation, Topennish,Washington
7.Lower Elwha Community Council.
8. Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe.
9. Muckleshoot Tribal Council.
10. Colville Business Council, (Colville, Chelan, Entiat,Methow, Okanogan, San Poil, Lake Nespelem, Nez Perce, Palouse, Moses, Sinkiuse, Wenatchee)
11. Quileute Tribal Council.
12. Puyallup Tribal Council.
13. Nisqually Indian Community Council.
14. Sauk-Suiattle Tribal Council.
15. Nooksack Indian Tribal Council, Whatcom
16. Shoalwater Bay Tribal Council (Chehalis, Chinook, Quinault).
17. Quileute Tribal Council
18. Quinault Tribal council
19. Tulalip Board of Directors , (Snohomish, Snowqualmie,Skyhomish)
20. SkokomishTribal Council.
21. Chehalis Business Council.
22.Squaxin Island Tribal Council.
23. Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, (Swinomish, Kikiallus, Lower Skagit, Samish)
24. Suquamish Tribal Council
25. Snoqualmie Tribe
26. Spokane Business Council,
27. Stillaquamish Board of Directors, Arlington, Washington
28. Hoh Tribal Business Council
29. Samish Indian Tribe, Anacortes, WA
1. Mitchell Bay Band
2. Snoqualmoo Tribe of Whidbey Island
3. Duwamish Indian Tribe, merged with Suquamish
4. Snoqualamie Indian Tribe, part of Tualip rez
5.Steilacoom Tribe, descendants of this tribe live on theSkokomish rez
6. Chinook Indian Tribe, Inc., are located on Quinault reservation; the one petitioning is in Oregon
7. Snohomish Tribe of Indians, located in Oregon, Snowhomish bands on Tualip reservation
8. Noo-Wha-Ha Band
9. Cowlitz Tribe
Mr. Jim McCain - Tucson Area Office 520-295-2519.
Information Technology Coordinator (ITC), Esther L. Gartner
Northwest Portland Area Health Board
webmaster email: npaihb@npaihb.org
homepage: http://www.teleport.com/~npaihb/
Northwest Area Tribal Health Representatives: The Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board is directed by 40 federally-recognized tribes in Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. Tribes become members of the NPAIHB by tribal council resolution which appoints a delegate to represent them on the Board of Directors. Current delegates are (alphabetical by tribe):
Wanda Johnson-Burns Paiute Tribe
Nancy Gilbert-Chehalis Tribe
Norma Peone-Coeur d'Alene Tribe
Doll Watt-Colville Confederated Tribes
Beverly Seaman-Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower
Umpqua and Siuslaw
Cheryle Kennedy-Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde
Judy Muschamp-Confederated Tribes of Siletz
Roberta Wilson-Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation
Janice Clements-Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs
Eric Metcalf-Coquille Tribe
Bobbie Dumont-Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Indians
William Penn-Hoh Tribe
Liz Mueller-Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe
Adeline Burns-Kalispel Tribe
Delmar Jackson-Klamath Tribe
Velma Bahe-Kootenai Tribe
Lorna Mike-Lower Elwha Band of Klallam
Sharon Coss-Lummi Tribe
Marcy Parker-Makah Tribe
Donna Starr-Muckleshoot Tribe
Julia Davis-Nez Perce Tribe
Mildred Frazier-Nisqually Tribe
Sandra Joseph-Nooksack Tribe
Leland Pubigee-Northwest Band of Shoshoni
Rose Purser-Port Gamble S'Klallam
Rod Smith-Puyallup Tribe
Christian Penn, Jr.-Quileute Tribe
Pearl Capoeman Baller-Quinault Tribe
Janet Cline-Samish Indian Nation
Norma Joseph-Sauk-Suiattle Tribe
Margie Jackson-Shoshone-Bannock Tribes
Marie Gouley-Skokomish Tribe
Jim Sijohn-Spokane Tribe
Brent Simcosky-Squaxin Island Tribe
Sharon Barnett-Stillaquamish Tribe
Bob Alexander-Suquamish Tribe
Susan Wilbur-Swinomish Tribe
Karen Fryberg-Tulalip Tribe
Stella Cuthbert-Upper Skagit Tribe
Lonnie Selam, Sr.-Yakama Nation
Indian Higher Education Initiative : Valerie Johnson
Cradleboard Project Evaluator:
Candace Fleming (home?)
1654 South Lafayette Street
Denver, CO 80220
303 315-9265, 303 315-9577
candace.fleming@uchsc.edu
also 303 315-9272 tel receptionist
Sites:
Akwesasne Freedom School, Roosevelton, NY. Franklin
Bugonaygeshig Tribal School, Cass Lake, MN. Cass
Boque Chitto Elementary, Philadelphia, MISS. Neshoba
Hotevilla Bacavi Tribal School, Hotevilla, AZ. Navajo
Menominee Tribal School, Neopit, WI. Menominee
Tuscarora Indian School, Lewiston, NY. Niagara
Sidwell Friends School, Arlington VA. District of Columbia
Kula Schools, Kilavia, HI. Kauai
Salmon River School, Fort Covington, NY. Franklin
Johnson Park School, Princeton, NJ. Mercer
Turtle Island Learning Center, Detroit, MI. Wayne
Chestnut Hill Academy, Philadelphia, PA. Philadelphia
Ke Kulakuiapui o Anuenue. Honolulu (school guessed)
Island School, HI. Kauai
Northwest Sites
Stone Child College, Box Elder, MT. Hill
Tahola Public School, Tahola, WA. Greys Harbor
Muckleshoot Tribal School, Auburn, WA. King
Boston Harbor Public School, Olympia, WA.
Thurston