On Tribal Lands, Digital Divide Brings New Form Of Isolation (fwd link)

[Richard Zane Smith]

hmmm... i don't know if i buy this

from the article* On Tribal Lands, Digital Divide Brings New Form Of
Isolation**:*
*
" Without reliable access to the Internet, many Native Americans find
themselves increasingly isolated, missing out on opportunities to secure
jobs, gain degrees through online classes, reach health care practitioners,
and even preserve native languages and rituals with new applications that
exploit the advantages of the web.
*
the first part may be true...but *its land remoteness that's helped KEEP
Dinéh bizaad alive* much longer than our
smaller tribes that have been completely surrounded by outsider influences
from the 1700s.

a long drive out of Dinétah (Navajoland) to find internet access to learn
the Navajo language
is too much like a Vietnamese traveling to Scotland to study Vietnamese
Languages.

ahh....what i would give for 200 years of such isolation for OUR people....
and just to be free of all the redneck influences here swallowing them

sometimes I long for the lovely isolation of Dinétah

Richard Zane Smith
Wyandotte Oklahoma


On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 2:12 PM, Phillip E Cash Cash <
cashcash at email.arizona.edu> wrote:

> On Tribal Lands, Digital Divide Brings New Form Of Isolation
>
> Posted: 04/20/2012 2:50 pm
> USA
>
> WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. -- Like many college students, Wilhelmina Tsosie must
> go online to complete her assignments. But unlike the vast majority of
> Americans, she finds that the biggest challenge in her coursework is merely
> getting connected.
>
> Tsosie is a member of the Navajo Nation, the Native American community
> whose sprawling reservation has long been isolated from the rest of the
> country -- an isolation now being reinforced by the digital age.
>
> On a recent night, she endured a 30-mile drive along a dark desert highway
> to reach this town, her nearest access point to the Internet. She carried
> her laptop into a hotel that offers wireless access. In the dim light of
> the lobby, she hunched over the screen and finished an online exam.
>
> Access full article below:
>
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/20/digital-divide-tribal-lands_n_1403046.html
>



-- 
*

"Think not forever of yourselves... nor of your own generation.

Think of continuing generations of our families,

think of our grandchildren and of those yet unborn,

whose faces are coming from beneath the ground."             The Peacemaker,


 richardzanesmith.wordpress.com

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