A new Indigenous Connectivity Institute is launching — here’s how it will drive funding towards equitable internet access

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The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes live in what is colonially known as Idaho, on a reservation that is divided into five districts. The terrain the reservation sits on is mountainous: households are spread out on the land, often without an officially recognized address. Frances Goli, who lives on the reservation, began plotting homes on the reservation onto a digital map, quickly realizing the vast nature of the undertaking. Without an official address, how could each of these rural households be eligible for internet access?

This and many other stories told at this year’s Indigenous Connectivity Summit emphasized the need to centre Indigenous experiences in the development of broadband infrastructure. That is why, after six years of hosting the Indigenous Connectivity Summit – which brings together Indigenous leaders, telecommunications professionals and internet connectivity advocates across North America – Internet Society and Connect Humanity will soon be handing over the reins to the brand new Indigenous Connectivity Institute. 

The Institute was announced at this year’s Summit in what is colonially known as Winnipeg, the traditional lands of the Anishinabe, Ininew, Oji-Cree, Dene and Dakota, and the Birthplace of the Métis Nation, the Red River Settlement. The new Institute will initially be incubated within Connect Humanity, whose projects work to fund digital equity in underserved communities. 

By 2024, Connect Humanity hopes to have spun the Indigenous Connectivity Institute out as its own standalone, Indigenous-led organization, supporting communities to build internet networks across what is colonially known as the US and Canada.  

Eventually, Internet Society and Connect Humanity will transition away from the Institute, allowing Indigenous communities and leaders to take the lead and share their own learnings and experiences about building internet infrastructure. It’ll help communities to “connect on their own terms,” said Mark Buell, the Director of Indigenous Programs at Connect Humanity. 

Connect Humanity will be guided by an Indigenous Advisory Committee over the next three-to-five years, which features the likes of Madeleine Redfern, the former mayor of Iqaluit and CEO of CanArctic Inuit Networks, and Bill Murdoch of Clear Sky Connections, which is building a fibre network with First Nations communities in Manitoba. 

The newly-formed Institute will also help the many groups and communities advocating for better connectivity to form a unified voice to telecommunications businesses and government bodies disbursing funding, according to Buell and Natalie Campbell, Senior Director of North American Government and Regulatory Affairs at Internet Society, who co-presented the Institute with Buell. 

The Institute will focus not just on building physical networks, but also on developing knowledge and capacity for Indigenous communities to make policy recommendations and advocate for more funding. 
 

What else needs to happen for more widespread internet connectivity?

Alongside the announcement of the Institute itself, numerous sessions at this year’s Summit focused on the peripheral issues that make connectivity possible in the first place. For example, achieving internet connectivity is nearly impossible without addressing the fact that, at the latest count, over 280 communities in rural Canada are yet to be connected with the electrical grid, making their access to energy unreliable. 

Suzanne Singer, who spoke at the Indigenous Connectivity Summit, is the founder of the non-profit Native Renewables. The organization brings off-grid solar-powered energy to homes in the Navajo and Hopi reservations, as well as training up a workforce within the community to be able to learn about the basics of electricity and solar panel maintenance. 

Native Renewables advances the concept of energy sovereignty, by allowing Indigenous communities to control and maintain their own energy infrastructure, as well as providing upskilling opportunities to those who have traditionally relied on the local coal mining industry for employment. 

Singer stressed the need for funding to scale this work up and connect more households across the Navajo and Hopi Nations with off-grid networks. 

In Canada, Indigenous Clean Energy is connecting clean energy experts with Indigenous leaders and communities, in order to build the skills and capacity within communities themselves. By investing in both clean energy infrastructure and education at a community level, these organizations can address energy poverty in a long-term, sustainable way. 

Multiple speakers at the Summit also touched on the need to shift telecommunications law and policy to address the unique needs of Indigenous communities. This advocacy work will also be one of the central aims of the Indigenous Connectivity Institute. Darrah Blackwater, a lawyer with a special interest in the relationship between Indigenous communities and telecommunications policy, campaigns for the right to “spectrum sovereignty” for instance. 

Speaking alongside Dr. Gregory Taylor, an associate professor at the University of Calgary who focuses on communications technology, governance and society, Blackwater argued that spectrum – in other words, the electromagnetic frequencies that allow internet communication to take place – are a natural resource which should be governed and managed by Indigenous communities themselves. 

In Canada, spectrum is distributed through an auction process. Outside of the large telecommunications corporations, very few others are able to get involved in this auction, and it’s also often designed to exclude other voices in the first place, according to Blackwater and Dr Taylor. Blackwater also pointed out that weaving Indigenous ideas about managing and distributing resources can go a long way in assigning spectrum where it’s needed most.  

Both panelists and audience members acknowledged that the Canadian federal government is starting to reach out to small and local internet service providers and Indigenous communities, specifically for a consultation on the policy and licensing framework for spectrum auctions. That said, more needs to be done to assert rights over spectrum, Blackwater argues. 

After all, she said, to be able to live and work in the US and Canada, spectrum is a fundamental requirement: “We need [spectrum] to put food on the table.” 

For Blackwater, spectrum access has become a means to achieve other vital human rights for Indigenous communities. This was echoed by Professor Brenda Gunn, part of the Faculty of Law at the University of Manitoba, and the Director of Research at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. She highlighted that internet access has become a gatekeeper to multiple other human rights: access to education, independent media, healthcare, and democratic decision-making. 

Using the metaphor of braided sweetgrass, and invoking the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Dr Gunn stated that in order for Indigenous people and their views to meaningfully be integrated into telecommunications policy, lawmakers need to recognize that Indigenous law existed on this land long before Canadian law did. Indigenous law has to be braided together with Canadian and international law in order to build an inclusive and equitable telecommunications policy. 
 

Where do communities fit in?

Over the six years that the Summit has been running, technical workshops form a key part of the agenda. As a result, members of Indigenous communities have been trained up, and able to build their own networks. This year’s Summit also presented an opportunity for communities and network-builders to present their own lived experiences and learn from one another. 

Before networks can be sprung up in Indigenous communities, a lot of data needs to be gathered. For example, broadband mapping exercises can help to understand the existing landscape of internet connectivity in a particular area. However, existing broadband maps don’t always show whether communities can actually access internet services, especially if the data is collected by internet service providers themselves. That’s according to Dustin Loup, project manager at the National Broadband Mapping Coalition at the Marconi Society, a US-based non-profit focused on digital inclusion. 

These maps can therefore end up becoming “mechanisms of control” in who does and doesn’t get access to federal funding, Loup added. That can lead to “digital redlining”, whereby communities in low-income areas are sidelined in internet infrastructure development.

Communities can, to some extent, gather their own data on broadband services and accessibility, but even that has often been rejected as unreliable data. For Pierette Renee Dagg, the Director of Technology Research at Merit Network in Michigan, it’s important to start by quantifying availability and demand: “Is everyone in need of broadband, and for what reason?” That, in turn, can help drive decision-making about the specifics of the infrastructure required. 

Dagg also emphasized that while data collection and analysis can go a long way toward proving the gaps in broadband access, it’s also vital to gather that data sensitively. Communities can be reluctant to provide data for surveys led by state or federal authorities, she says. 

But, when communities are able to gather data at a grassroots level in a way that works for them, with local people being empowered to do so, it’s easier for them to see and perceive the benefit.

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