iSchool Capstone

Indigenizing the Digital Divide

Project tags:

information behavior & user research

knowledge organization

Discovery Award, Honorable Mention
Project poster

Throughout this project, our goal was to gather enough data in order to create a greater sense of awareness regarding the technological gap between American Indian and Alaska Native communities and quality network connectivity. Past experience has shown that the coverage is spotty and mostly non-existent in certain towns within our research area—White Swan, specifically. The team used online sources to find coverage maps over the Yakama Indian Reservation and conducted a site visit to the land itself in order to check actual coverage and gather real-time connection readings. Our findings indicate that the big carriers (such as Verizon) are essentially not advertising the entire truth as they offer spotty data coverage. Next steps are to revisit the Nation and deliver this report for them to use as a preliminary study for their own use.

Project participants:

Tess Wilder Cervantes

MLIS

Iisaaksiichaa Ross Braine

MSIM