Lael Echo-Hawk–
Setting the Stage for Business in Indian Country
By Manny Frishberg
Lael Echo-Hawk grew up in the 1970s and ’80s in a small Alaskan village that she said finally received cell phone service around 2009. But even that connection is tenuous. “If someone pushes the wrong button or pulls the plug, you’re out [of service] for a week,” she said.
That experience, and working for more than half a dozen years for the Tulalip Tribes in northwestern Washington — one of the more tech-savvy reservations in a state known for its high-tech industries — has convinced her of the importance of being connected, for education as well as the chance for entrepreneurs to start successful businesses.
“In Washington state, we have Microsoft, tech startups,… but we also have areas where there are tribes that do not have broadband,” Echo-Hawk said. “So, when their kids go online to take their mandated ‘No Child Left Behind’ test, which has to be done online, everybody has to get off the internet because it could crash.” The situation, she said, works against everyone, especially the young people. “If I’m a 14-year-old kid forced to take this test and my internet crashes, I’m done.”
Echo-Hawk cited a study in Alaska showing that the state’s businesses that had broadband internet access made $100,000 more a year, on average, than businesses that did not. But the problem is even more fundamental: Being able to use a computer and find what you’re looking for on the internet are now considered essential skills. How do people living where he internet doesn’t reach ever learn to function in an interconnected world?
“If you don’t have access to those things, and you don’t know how to use a computer to do searches and to do those things online, you are essentially in the Stone Age,” Echo-Hawk said.“How do you develop a business? You have to go online to file your business license and do all your reporting. If you don’t even know how to do that kind of stuff, you can’t even start.”