Description

As the Internet, electronic mail, compact discs, and digital telephones sweep through much of the United States, Native American activists are asking themselves whether and how the new technology can empower Native communities. Or will the new technology of telecommunications and computers serve only as a modern-day version of the telegraph and railroad that ran right through Indian lands with little benefit to the tribes? Will the technology serve to bring together or further disconnect Alaskan and Hawaiian Natives from their continental and island homelands?

At the time of the American Revolution, what is now the United States was home to hundreds of indigenous peoples with a variety of forms of self-government, organized at the tribal, village, or island level. Today’s Native Americans—American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians—are the descendants of these indigenous peoples. Over the last 200 years, indigenous peoples have struggled to maintain their cultures, sovereignty, and self-determination in the face of population pressures and ever-expanding national and state governments.