Small, northern and wired

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The Kuh-ke-nah Network of Smart First Nations is the name of an Aboriginal demonstration project in Northwestern Ontario whose proponents aim to prove their small and isolated communities can develop economic capacity using modern information technology.

The federal government believes they can too. It will contribute $4.5 million over three years to assist the five First Nations of the Kuh-ke-nah Network (K-Net) launch the project and thereby help fulfill the federal mandate to make Canada the most Internet-connected nation in the world.

Indian Affairs Minister Robert Nault announced the funding on behalf of the Minister of Industry, Brian Tobin, on July 6. He said the project "will play a key role in the future of service delivery in the region."

Geordi Kakepetum, executive director of the Keewaytinook Okimakanak tribal council, said the network would show "how information and communication technologies economically and socially support the well-being of our communities." He added that developing capacity in the delivery of high-speed data services would provide education and health services that were beyond their reach up to now.

In addition to employment and economic benefits, the First Nations are claiming the opportunity to showcase their culture and empower their individual citizens in daily life.

First Nations participating in the project are Deer Lake; Fort Severn; Keewaywin; North Spirit Lake; and Poplar Hill. Their combined population is about 2,500, according to K-Net project manager Brian Beaton.

Beaton was one of 34 consultants on the National Broadband Task Force, which recommended that all Canadian communities should be connected to the Internet by 2004.

He said the Contact North work in distance education provided the model.

"The whole idea of the Smart demonstration project was to show how the communities could utilize information communication technologies, ICTs, for the purpose of economic and social well-being."

The Kuh-ke-nah Network of Smart First Nations is one of 12 such communities in Canada. The federal finance budget of 1999 allocated $60 million over three years to fund Smart Communities demonstration projects.

They are called demonstration projects because their accumulated experience will be pooled and shared with other regions that want to develop their own Smart communities.

"The partners that we're working with include the regional organizations, other tribal councils, other First Nations, and so as things are happening in our communities, we are assisting and working with these other groups to see that this grows," said Beaton.

The project will employ 27 people full-time: three from each of the communities and the remainder in K-Net's offices in Sioux Lookout and Balmertown. In addition to immediate project employment, Beaton sees permanent spin-offs.

"We're not trying to see this as another Smart project being delivered. What we're trying to do is integrate it totally, the concept of using these communication tools within our organization.

"So economic development, for example. . . . That portfolio is being expanded within this project to include a number of different initiatives . . . so that the Smart demonstration project is totally integrated within the organization itself, so it becomes a Smart Keewatinook Okimakanak."

Beaton was not familiar with aboriginalmall.com, which was touted as Canada's "first full-service, one stop Aboriginal virtual shopping mall" when it was launched in Alberta in March. He said, however, that it sounded like "the perfect example of one of the Smart applications that could be developed.

"But in terms of our own project . . . we're building a network to connect those communities, and putting the infrastructure within those communities so they can sustain it."

At the present time K-Net runs two-way video conferencing over the network in each of the five communities.

Their Internet high school has run for a year with 30 Grade 9 stuents in three communities: Poplar Hill, North Spirit Lake and Fort Severn. It will expand this September. Beaton said students "don't have any other option to obtain their high school" except to leave home.

Margaret Fiddler from Sandy Lake, which is not one of the members of Keewaytinook, is the principal of the high school. She has seen some students obtain a real benefit from having an additional year at home.

"We are pushing toward having eight communities this year with Grade 9 and 10," said Fiddler.

"It is a regular classroom. The kids go into class and put in a full school day, the same as they would in a traditional classroom. They have a trained teacher with them-now the difference is that all of their courses come to them over the Internet.

"In community one," she added, "the teacher plays two roles. He is a mentor for the students that are on site, and at the same time he teaches one course to all of the students on the Internet.

"For example, the Poplar Hill teacher taught computers over the Internet, and the North Spirit Lake teacher taught English, and the Fort Severn teacher taught geography to all of the students. So the kids are getting the benefit from having a teacher on site, but at the same time the advantage is that the teacher doesn't have to teach all eight subjects, which they would do in an ordinary classroom. So you get the expertise of a number of teachers."

She said the wired classroom has helped some students develop an improved self-concept. A couple who were "really down on themselves" Fiddler said, "discovered they've got just the same smarts as everybody else."

In addition, "they've had the opportunity to be on computers, so they're a jump ahead of their provincial counterparts who are scrambling in computer labs. These kids have computers on a one-to-one basis."

For more information about K-Net, see http://smart.knet.on.ca online. For more information about the Smart Communities program, go to http://smartcommunities.ic.gc.ca.