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Computers create a special challenge for the Native cultures of North America. Clearly they can be highly useful in maintaining networks, sharing information between culture groups, and enabling people to communicate with each other over vast distances. Moreover, as computers become integrated into more aspects of economic life, competency in their use is becoming increasingly essential to employment opportunities, both in mainstream communities and on many Native American reservations. In addition to enhancing networking, communication, and employment opportunities, computers are also being seen by many as providing greater opportunity for Native students to learn about their own cultural traditions. This claim, that computers will help in cultural transmission of traditional knowledge and do so without substantial culture loss is, however, more questionable.
In a special issue on technology and Native culture, Craig Howe concludes his discussion of the Western cultural patterns reinforced through computermediated thought and communication with the following observation:
The Internet is an exceedingly deceptive technology whose power is immensely attractive to American Indians. But until its universalistic and individualistic foundation is restructured to incorporate spatial, social, spiritual, and experiential dimensions that particularize its application, cyberspace is no place for tribalism.1
This warning, however, goes unheeded by educators, linguists, and many tribal leaders who see in the computer a means of revitalizing indigenous languages and preserving the traditional knowledge essential to tribal identity. While Howe cautions that the computer is the latest "foreign good" that encodes the Western ideal of individualism and a rootless form of existence, educators of Native children in Canada, the United States, and Mexico continue to justify the classroom use of computers on grounds that echo the arguments being used in the dominant culture (see below).2 Thus, tribal knowledge that may be in danger of being lost as elders pass on appears safe from extinction if encoded on a CD-ROM. Indigenous language projects, classroom use of computers adapted to the characteristics of Native languages, and the use of computers in Native classrooms to exchange ideas within the "global village" represent just a few of the efforts that ignore Howe's warning about the illusory nature of computers. David Lewis, for example, explains the education gains for Naskapi students in rural Quebec in the following way:
The rationale for using technology...