Today, sixteen advocacy groups and indigenous organizations submitted a letter to Congress requesting an extension of the Federal Communications Commission’s 2.5 GHz Broadband Rural Tribal Priority Window.
“The unprecedented impact of the global crisis on this particular proceeding warrants a deadline extension,” wrote the advocacy groups.
The Arizona Department of Education has formed a new task force to address the digital divide and the technology needs of schools. Technology inequalities existed long before the COVID-19 pandemic, but the rapid transition to online school revealed the deep disparities between people with and without adequate broadband internet access.
Indian Country continues to battle the negative effects COVID-19 has had on tribal economies as well as the health of tribal citizens. ASU’s Construction in Indian Country (CIIC) hosted a Virtual Town Hall June 19, which brought tribal leaders together with scholars and industry experts to discuss the current situation and how Indian Country can rebound from the pandemic.
In the fight against COVID-19, tribal nations face many of the same health, education, and economic public policy challenges as non-Native state and local governments. However, they are further hindered by an obstacle course of red tape and administrative misapplications from the federal government that prevents tribes from fully utilizing their sovereign authority and hamper their pandemic defense and recovery strategies. This is an area that some U.S. representatives feel deserves the full attention of Congress and the Administration.
A new bill announced today by the co-chairs of the Congressional Native American Caucus would give tribes emergency authority of broadband spectrum over their lands, in an effort to greatly increase internet access for tribal nations grappling with COVID-19 pandemic response.
As the school year comes to a close and we all begin another month in some stage of quarantine, it is hard to believe how much our world has changed. And yet, some things haven’t changed; rather long-standing disparities are only just now coming to the forefront of public attention.