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- By Chez Oxendine
- Economic Development
The Bureau of Indian Affairs introduced a new division to help federally recognized tribes deploy technology and manage connectivity on their tribal lands.
Announced on Monday, the Indigenous Connectivity and Technology division comes as tribes and their entities navigate a wave of new technologies and historic levels of funding for tribal broadband initiatives. The new division will help tribes develop and manage their broadband infrastructure and explore new electromagnetic spectrum-leasing opportunities.
It will also manage broadband permitting and rights of way, as well as providing technical assistance and grant management. That’s necessary ahead of the “onslaught” of incoming permits, said Matthew Rantanen, vice president for tribal broadband at network nonprofit GoldenStateNet.
“There’s all this money out there now, and tribes are starting to deploy it,” Rantanen said. “This is a good way to make sure they’re ready to get through some of that.”
Even better, he said, is that the department is headed by Nez Perce tribal member and longtime Indian Country tech advocate Danae Wilson. Wilson previously served as assistant director for internet access at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy through the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).
Wilson’s new position as director of the ICT “modernizes the BIA’s basic fiduciary duty regarding Tribal lands, digital assets and finite resources,” she said in a statement.
The BIA also plans to hire an attorney-advisor in the coming months to support the ICT division, Wilson told Tribal Business News in an email.
In addition to assisting with infrastructure rollout, the ICT division will work with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on spectrum access. The FCC governs the use of licensed spectrum over which wireless signals can be broadcast. Access to wireless communications spectrum is crucial to many tribal broadband operations in remote areas, Rantanen said.
The issue, as with many tribal broadband operations, boils down to the remote locations for some tribal residents. Hard wires can’t always get to locations at the tops of mountains or in the farthest parts of some reservations, Rantanen said. In addition, crossing networks between reservations means getting new permits and rights of way any time those lines cross non-tribal borders.
“Building a network like that becomes cost prohibitive as far as easement. If you do that middle mile with wireless, all of those problems go away,” Rantanen said. “Spectrum is very, very valuable.”
Wilson said DOI would work with the Commerce Department and the FCC to explore licensing spectrum as a tribal trust asset.
In addition, she pointed to a newly extended policy memorandum aimed at streamlining rights-of-way and business applications for tribal broadband projects. Measures in the memorandum include giving tribes regulatory authority over third party developers, obtaining consent from all tribes in affected territories, and putting a 60-day deadline on DOI approvals on right-of-way applications.
The timing of the election arrives amid broad federal support for tribal broadband. Multiple federal agencies, including the Department of Agriculture and the NTIA, have launched programs supporting new tribal broadband projects and technical assistance.
The NTIA has led the charge with the $3 billion Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program, and the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. The BEAD money went directly to states for later use in sub grants to tribes, per prior Tribal Business News reporting.
The USDA’s Rural Development Agency has poured more than $1 billion into tribal broadband via its $25 billion ReConnect Program. That initiative sees the agency supporting connectivity efforts in rural areas, such as many tribal reservations.
The BIA has also joined in, prior to its launch of ICT, with its National Tribal Broadband Grant. In May 2023, BIA distributed $2.7 million in its first round of funding to 18 tribes and tribal organizations. The opportunity for the program’s second round of funding closed in January 2024.
As with its spectrum operations and broadband permitting, ICT will be pulling the grant under its wing, per the BIA’s website. In a statement, Assistant Secretary Bryan Newland (Bay Mills Indian Community) called ICT a way to “modernize” BIA’s broadband support for tribes and give them “a long overdue seat at the national connectivity policy development table.”
Editor's Note: The story has been updated with comments by Wilson that were sent to Tribal Business News after the story went live.
