Native Peoples magazine is a bimonthly publication dedicated to the arts and life-ways of the Native peoples of the Americas. This magazine now has an estimated readership of over 100,000; with subscribers (most in the U.S.) and readers in 36 foreign countries.
The American Indian Radio on Satellite (AIROS) network is a national distribution system for Native programming to Tribal communities and to general audiences through Native American and other public radio stations as well as the Internet; users are invited to interact with each other on social media including Facebook, twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+, Vimeo and Pinterest. Native Language smartphone/tablet App and ebook are also available to be downloaded for convenient interaction.
Canku Ota is a free, monthly, online Newsletter celebrating Native America, its traditions and accomplishments. Since year 2000, there has been over four million visitors to the webpage.
Reflection: Even though there are many similar webpages that provide good sources for news, commentary, discussions, photos and more about the Aboriginal people and most of them are linked to social media, no statistics of Internet penetration for worldwide or Canadian aboriginal population is currently available. According to Creative Spirits webpage, however, date provided by the Australian government showed that 80% of all Australians accessed the Internet regularly in 2011, while just 6% of residents in some remote Aboriginal communities even had a computer. Data showed “while Aboriginal people living in cities and regional towns usually enjoy good Internet access, in 2007 only 10% of Aboriginal communities could access to the Internet. In some communities, as few as 2% of residents have an Internet connection. 58% had used a computer but a third of those had never been online.” This shows a regional divide of Internet access between Australians and aboriginal Australians. The launch of Connecting Canadians in 2014, or the Government of Canada’s plan to bring high-speed Internet to 280,000 Canadian households, hopefully will allow the aboriginal population or Canadians in remote regions “to access information, services and opportunities that would otherwise be out of reach” and bridge the Internet gap within the country. I am looking forward to seeing more similar projects to be introduced and implemented across the globe.