Datacenter Gives Internet To 70 Percent of Navajo Nation

Nerval's Lobster writes "The Navajo Nation cut the ribbon August 13 on an $8 million data center that has been under debate and development since 2000, when then-President Bill Clinton expressed shock that a 13-year-old Navajo girl who just won a new laptop couldn't connect to the Internet. At the time that girl won the laptop in a school contest, the Navajo Nation--a 27,425 square-mile region that covers portions of Arizona, Utah and New Mexico--had barely any IT infrastructure. The incident helped drive debate among leaders of the Navajo Nation, many of whom said they believed adding telecommunications and computing facilities were secondary to other concerns for the chronically poverty stricken region. The 50,000-square-foot facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico includes 25,000-sq.-ft. of datacenter and an equal space for computer training and business incubation, according to Nova Corp., an IT services company owned by Navajo Nation and formed in 2004 to execute an IT plan to create the "Digital Navajo Nation" (PDF). The drive to get it built also helped push development of a $46 million broadband project designed to cover about half of Navajo territory with 550 miles of fiber, 32 new cell towers and upgrades to another 27. It will eventually connect more than 30,000 households and 1,000 businesses."

Comments

Re:also goal of 2009 stimulus program

[Anonymous Coward]

Nova corp isn't some fly-by-night company though; I've actually consulted with them (they were looking to upgrade the nation's slot machines from old mechanical ones to new digital card-based models, and open some new casinos). That said, they're run by Navaho nobility, with all the kickbacks, inaction and nepotism such political ties entail. They did get things done, however, which is more than I can say for the US government's attempts in the area.

Fact Check..

[moaneye]

Just wanted to post some fact check data here. I live 10 miles from the data center, was interviewed for a position there (turned down the consequent job offer) and am friends with the data center administrator. First of all, the article is incorrect - the data center is in Shiprock New Mexico on the Navajo Nation, NOT in Albuquerque. This is a 240+ mile difference. It's a common occurance that news articles written by people outside the area tend to make. Everyone not from New Mexico thinks that Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Taos are the only places in New Mexico. Also, the data center was not built with grant funds. The grant funds went towards the fiber optic project. NTUA, the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority, invested their own capital to build the data center. In fact, what the ariticle does not make clear is that NTUA houses and manages the data center. What makes this unusual is that NTUA is the utility for the Navajo Nation (water, sewer, electricity, etc.). Building and running a data center is a little out of their core compentencies. Having said that, however, they've done an impressive job. The data center is state of the art and well built. They have power feeds from two different bulk electric utilities, two massive backup generators, two buildings of UPSs, and a state-of-the art NOC. What they don't have, in my humble opinion, is a completely fleshed out marketing team. But then I don't know exactly what their marketing strategy is anyway. As far as being racist goes, the only comment I've seen so far which I would say is blatantly racist is the one about "every liquor store in the region" putting up a website. That's kind of harsh, and is a really bad sterotype. Again, however, that's just my opinion. This is a free country after all.

Re:Fact Check..

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymous Native attorney here, offering information but not advice. Native American preference in hiring is considered under federal law to be similar to a citizenship requirement (it is classified as a political classification) rather than a racial requirement. Hence, the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs is allowed to hire with Native preference. See Morton v. Mancari, 417 U.S. 535 (1974). Native nations, of course, are sovereigns who can require citizenship just as a state can require state residency for some positions.

Yeah, no, about the criminal law enforcement by tribal courts. Unless you're a Native person, they have super limited criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians (although, oddly, our nations have the same jurisdiction over Indians of other nations as they do over their own citizens). For a non-Indian on a rez, it's kind of akin to being able to walk into Alabama or Canada and not be subject to Alabama's or Canada's courts, but this is a long-standing rule of federal law. In fact, tribal criminal jurisdicion is considered by federal law to be pretty limited to small stuff--which means major crimes generally have to be prosecuted by the feds, leading to all sorts of problems, perhaps most infamously in protecting Indian women from sexual assault by non-Indians. And, of course, if the "Indian gas station" is on non-rez, non-trust land then state law will probably apply anyway.

You're right that many tribal governments have transparency issues. This is something that activists have been working to change, but centuries of outsiders building up elite families has created long-standing problems. Judge Steve Russell (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma) has an excellent book explaining why our tribal sovereignty is endangered by our continuing to allow our nations' governments to operate like third-world countries.