As ubiquitous as “The Internet” is, more than 40 million Americans can’t access it from home. And rural Indigenous communities (at least 628,000 households) are some of the most disconnected. They’ve been forced to come up with their own solutions, and in many ways, they’re succeeding.
This is also happening in many other countries including South Africa. The original Internet was built on open source and hooked together with whatever was available. It does not need a fibre company or similar commercial entity to come sell a service to you.
These community networks are typically mesh-type networks that interconnect users and the article below has a few references and may help spark the initiative needed if you are in a community that requires Interconnect connectivity. It may seem daunting, but the principles are not complex and even funding is often available from non-profit foundations.
Community networks can serve as a redistribution of power into the hands of the community. Even deeper, operating a community network supports a larger claim for Indigenous peoples: sovereignty.
See Faced with limited resources, Indigenous communities built their own internet. Here’s how.
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Locally-run, community-based networks are filling in where the government has failed to eliminate the digital divide.