Indigenous Connectivity Summit 2020
Policy & Advocacy Training Webinar
Agenda
Week 1: Stories of success in the time of COVID-19
Tuesday, 1 September 2020, 3:00pm ET / 12:00pm PT / 9:00am HT
Resources:
- Broadband 101: The basics of terminology (Institute for Local Self-Reliance)
- Diplo’s Internet Governance Acronym Glossary (Diplo, Internet Society, Geneva Internet Platform)
- Five Lessons for Tech Powered Civic Engagement (Next Century Cities, Benton)
- Nunavik gets funding to launch work on its high-speed internet network (Nunatsiatq News)
Week 2: Looking back and looking forward
Tuesday, 8 September 2020

Dr. Rob McMahon
Associate Professor, University of Alberta; Master of Arts in Communication and Technology (MACT) and Master of Arts in Community Engagement (MACE)
Resources:
- Office of the Auditor General of Canada’s Report on Connectivity in Remote & Rural Areas (Office of the Auditor General of Canada)
- Ottawa Citizen Op-Ed (Ottawa Citizen)
- Organizing For a Community Network, Against Big Cable (Institute for Local Self-Reliance)
- First Mile Connectivity Consortium Call for Comments: Barriers to Broadband Deployment (by Rob McMahon, First Mile Connectivity Consortium)
- A “Whole Community” Approach for Sustainable Digital Infrastructure in Remote and Northern First Nations (Northern Public Affairs)
- Canada’s Univeral Broadband Fund: Building the new program together (Innovation, Science and Economic Development, Government of Canada)
- Internet Exchange Points: An Essential Infrastructure for Rural Broadband Initiatives (The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California)
- The Adversarial Divide (Sally Braun, Western James Bay Telecom Network)
- Article on sustainable data centers (Nature Research Journal)
- Article on sustainability, green energy & data centers (CBC News)
- Digital Reservations Act (Rep. Deb Haaland and Sen. Elizabeth Warren- Native News Online)
– Bill text (Rep. Deb Haaland and Sen. Elizabeth Warren)
– One-pager (Rep. Deb Haaland and Sen. Elizabeth Warren) - Bridging the Tribal Digital Divide Act (Senator Tom Udall)
– Bill text (Senators Tom Udall, Maria Cantwell, and Martin Heinrich) - Tribal Technology Assessment Study (American Indian Policy Institute, Arizona State University)
– Fact Sheet (American Indian Policy Institute, Arizona State University)
Week 3: Becoming an advocate and community consultations
Tuesday, 15 September 2020
Resources:
- ILSR report (Institute for Local Self-Reliance)
The report details how local governments provided seed funding for a co-op, but the key issues I want to share from it are about the need to keep working despite setbacks and the ways they formed a marketing committee to educate the community. - 2.5GHz Rural Tribal Priority Window LTE Networks and 2.5GHz Spectrum Channels (AMERIND, Southern California Tribal Chairmen’s Association, Google American Indian Network)
- Tribes Connecting Tribes (AMERIND)
- Community Engagement for Broadband Planning (Next Century Cities)
- What Fiber Broadband Can Do For Your Community (Broadband Communities)
Week 4: Becoming an advocate in your community for funding
Tuesday, 22 September 2020
Resources:
- 2-pager on types of social finance (Nonprofit Finance Fund)
- a. “What is a community bond anyways?” (Future of Good)
b. Short version without sign-up wall (Future of Good) - Broadband Fund Overview Document (First Mile)
- Federal Programs to Support Deployment of Broadband Infrastructure in the United States (Next Century Cities)
Week 5: Role of existing rules and laws
Tuesday, 29 September 2020
Resources:
- How to submit comments to the FCC (Next Century Cities)
- Rules of 501(c)(3) lobbying (National Association for the Education of Young Children)
- ISED Resources for broadband access (Government of Canada; Innovation, Science, and Economic Development)
- Commercial Broadband Satellites & The U.S. Regulatory Framework (presentation by Jim Schlichting, FCC)
- FCC Overview (presentation)
- Introduction to the CRTC (presentation)
Week 6: Building the policy recommendations
Tuesday, 6 October 2020
(week of Indigenous Connectivity Summit)
Resources:
- 2019 ICS Policy Recommendations
- 2018 ICS Policy Recommendations
- Local Opinion: FCC, UA could do more to allow tribes spectrum rights be recognized (by Darrah Blackwater, published on Tucson.com)
Leading image: Working together with the Internet Society to learn how to use and install the Internet during the Internet Society/ Pu’uhonua O Waimanalo training session on November 14th, 2019. © Elyse Butler