Volume 15 Summer 2004 Issue No. 4

Distance Education Comes Home

by Marjane Ambler

Not that long ago, "distance education" for American Indian people meant boarding schools. Federal agents and missionaries ripped children from their parents' arms and transported them to far away boarding schools where they were detained, often isolated from their families for the entire school year.

The federal government intended for the schools to immerse the children in non-Indian culture so they would forget their "backward," "heathen," and "savage" tribal and family traditions. The boarding schools were told to "drown the Indian and save the man," in the words of Richard Henry Pratt of the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania.

Boarding schools left a tragic legacy that surfaces today in many American Indian people as physical and sexual abuse, alcohol and drug dependence, and - significantly - generalized distrust of education.

Fortunately, the federal government failed in its mission to eradicate tribal cultures and languages. One quarter of American Indian people in this country live on reservations where they can participate in cultural and family activities in the land of their ancestors. Thousands of "urban Indians" still visit their home reservations for social and cultural events; many plan to retire there, and they seek closer ties.

Taking Education to the People

Today "distance education" means something entirely different. Tribal colleges and universities are using technology to deliver higher education to the students where they live rather than students being forced to abandon their families and tribes. They are creating virtual universities, offering a broad and growing range of classes to students no matter where they live.

All but five of the 34 tribal colleges in the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) in the United States are involved in some form of distance education, according to Carrie Billy (Navajo), AIHEC director of technology development.

Through satellite networks and the Internet, tribal colleges transmit and receive workshops, courses, and entire degree programs using cutting edge technologies, many of which are described elsewhere in this issue. Three of the pioneers of tribal college distance education are featured as authors in this issue: Dr. Gerald "Carty" Monette (Ojibwa), Dr. Lori Lambert (Abenaki/Mi'kmaq), and Mark Trebian (Tlingit).

Tribal colleges have turned to technology because Indian people often live in remote, rural areas with little access to education. The General Accounting Office found that the tribal college students who benefit from distance education are often older students with dependents who cannot leave their jobs to travel to a college town.

The 34 tribal colleges serve many more tribes, some hundreds of miles away. The tribal colleges work closely with tribal officials to determine their tribes' needs. Based in Washington state, for example, Northwest Indian College broadcasts classes to remote campuses on reservations in three states. Bay Mills Community College serves all 11 tribes in Michigan and people in 17 other states. Southwest Indian Polytechnic Institute serves tribes in four Southwestern states.

Articles in this issue provide other examples. Community Health Representatives and Head Start instructors receive professional training without leaving their work duties. Tribal college students and faculty conduct scientific research with partners at some of the nation's top research universities and laboratories.

Providing a Cultural Foundation

Strategic planning by the colleges in AIHEC has helped keep the technology from straying from their missions. Outside experts who have studied the tribal colleges' work in technology have noticed that it differs from other systems. Rather than competition and top down decision making, the colleges are more likely to cooperate and share resources.

Technology has the potential to "increase the marginalization of the already marginalized," who cannot necessarily pay the costs for the hardware and software, according to Alex Byrne in an article in the periodical, The Electronic Library: The International Journal for the Application of Technology in Information Environments.

The AIHEC Virtual Library, however, avoids this problem by emphasizing sharing. It "uses the best of communal spirit, sharing resources to bring collective access and skills," he said.

Dr. Daniel Atkins, professor of information and computer science at the University of Michigan, admired the work of tribal college librarians who developed the AIHEC Virtual Library and how they dealt with cultural issues and decision making, as explained elsewhere in this issue. He said the virtual library "empowers communities to be both consumers and producers of digital information."

Tribal colleges and universities are naturally more concerned about cultural sensitivities than outsiders might be. In this issue, wireless project managers explain, for example, the precautions they took to avoid placing telecommunication towers on culturally important mountains and bluffs.

For her doctoral dissertation, Dr. Carol Davis (Ojibwa) of Turtle Mountain Community College interviewed 18 spiritual leaders from North Dakota's six tribes about potential problems in transmitting cultural subjects via distance education. They provided specific guidelines about what could and could not be shared with people outside those tribes (TCJ, Vol. X, N.3).

Overcoming Barriers

It has not been easy for tribal colleges to start distance education programs, and they still face many obstacles. The U.S. Department of Commerce said in 2000 that 23% of rural Native American households lacked access to telephones, and 73% lacked access to computers. Major telecommunications companies have little interest in serving high cost, low population rural areas.

AIHEC decided, however, to tackle the "digital divide," as described by Dr. Carty Monette elsewhere in this issue. They know better than anyone that unemployment and poverty lead to despair and a sense of hopelessness. Young, geographically isolated, and poor, the tribal colleges had the most to gain or lose by the technology revolution.

To help their communities participate in distance education and commerce, tribal colleges are building the infrastructure. Today, with AIHEC's leadership, every one of the 34 tribal colleges and universities in the United States has achieved broadband Internet connectivity.

Several of the tribal colleges are using wireless technology inside their buildings, and four have taken it a significant step further. They are piloting a wide-band wireless Internet backbone to serve the "last mile" where rural telecommunications companies usually stop providing broadband Internet.

Never before tested on a similar scale anywhere in the country, the wireless web that they are weaving will, when fully implemented, provide high-speed wireless Internet through the college's access point to offices, schools, businesses, and individual family homes on the reservation.

The General Accounting Office found, however, that tribal colleges and other minority-serving institutions face continual challenges caused by lack of funding. While they are training skilled information technology specialists, they constantly must fight for the resources necessary to keep them. Funding for some of the initiatives described in this issue has run out, and their future is in jeopardy.

No Longer Downloading

At a meeting about 15 years ago of tribal college deans planning distance education, I remember one of the deans insisting that they needed the capacity to upload courses on the satellite network. "We have been downloading education for over 100 years," he said.

No longer passive recipients of someone else's ideas of education, American Indian people are producing distance education that makes it possible for students to work confidently in two worlds. Tribal college technology programs are transforming attitudes toward education and, in the process, transforming nations of people.

Marjane Ambler has been editor of Tribal College Journal for nine years. This issue would not have been possible without support from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the assistance of Carrie Billy, AIHEC director of technology development, who contributed ideas, contacts, and perspective.

For more information, see Serving the Nation: Opportunities & Challenges in IT at MSIs (Alliance for Equity in Higher Education, www.msi-alliance.org). Also see Distance Education Challenges for MSIs & Implications for Federal Education Policy (General Accounting Office, www.gao.gov or call (202) 512-6000).