The projects described in this Topic require a supportive framework of policies, funding and regulations. This enabling environment can be shared by the efforts of Indigenous connectivity advocates who are working hard to ensure that efforts to address digital divides and support digital inclusion reflect their self-determined goals. Starting in 2018, these advocates have presented policy recommendations that emerged from their annual Indigenous Connectivity Summit (ICS).
You can download the most recent recommendations from 2020 and 2021.
In 2016, the CRTC declared the Internet to be a “basic service” in Canada. Among the guiding principles for funding of broadband projects, as laid out in 2016 was the intention of focusing on “underserved areas in Canada” and complementing current initiatives.
The ICS recommendations urge Canada and the US to “take meaningful action to uphold” the principles of UNDRIP, noting the TRC of Canada’s specific call to implement UNDRIP, explicit in the 43rd. call to action, as well the “recommendation that national regulators increase Indigenous programing and representations of culture, language, and perspectives through the media” (2020).
Community networking projects like those described in this unit must engage with a complicated array of legal, policy, and regulatory frameworks. These conditions link to centuries of settler colonial policies and practices, and result in significant challenges for Indigenous community networking projects. We discuss these challenges in more detail in Unit 10, which also presents the e-Community framework as a potential solution.
As an introduction to some of these issues, listen to a short CBC North radio interview with members of the First Mile Connectivity Consortium and KFN. The interview describes their attempts to revise the regulatory requirements for broadband development in Canada’s far north. These partners appeared before the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission in summer 2013 to suggest ways that the rules governing broadband infrastructure and funding might be revised to support community networking projects.
The transcripts of the 2013 CRTC public hearings, including those held in Whitehorse, Yukon territory are in the Government of Canada archives. The introduction to the First Mile Consortium’s 2014 journal article Indigenous Regulatory Advocacy in Canada’s Far North begins by describing the atmosphere during the consultations, before addressing some of the challenges faced by Northern Indigenous communities as they work to expand broadband connectivity, the historical and colonial roots of those challenges, and, finally, presenting the approach and strategies advocated by the First Mile Connectivity Consortium.
Read more news coverage of these activities at the First Mile Connectivity Consortium (FMCC) website.
You can read a detailed summary of this intervention in an article published in the Journal of Community Informatics.
This work continues to the present, as the FMCC continues to advocate for funding, spectrum access, and other supports for Indigenous networks. This page on the FMCC website summarizes and presents these initiatives.