EnLIGHTeNING Lunch with Marisa Duarte

The digital interfaces we live through—ICT GUIs, social media platforms, intranets–are embedded with tacit design values. Familiar values include efficiency, usability, and accessibility. But what happens when leaders in tribal border communities—places scored with years of racial conflict and questionable land claims—decide to built out digital infrastructures that challenge unpleasant values such as racial prejudice, xenophobia, and profiteering on impoverished populations? Listening to two ISP directors’  narratives about prejudice and associated challenges to providing Internet service to tribal border communities—Nez Perce and the southeastern region of the Navajo Nation, respectively–reveals colonial tensions and decolonial solutions shaping access to information and communication technology infrastructure, and opens a pathway for inquiry into questions about designing sociotechnical systems to ameliorate the long tail of detrimental colonial legacies.