Page 30 - Winds Of Change Fall 2018

25NATIVE STEM ENTERPRISES
■ Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians
■ Aiya Solar Project
■ All Native Group
■ Bristol Bay Native Corporation
■ Cherokee Nation
■ Cherokee Preservation Foundation
■ Chickasaw Nation Science, Technology, and Math Academy
■ Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana
■ Choctaw Global Sta ng
■ First American Plastic Molding Enterprises
■ Gila River Indian Community Utility Authority
■ GSI Companies
■ Intertribal Timber Council
■ Koniag Inc.
■ KÔTA Solutions
■ Menominee Tribal Enterprises
■ Muskogee Technology
■ Navajo Transitional Energy Company
■ Osage Nation Energy Services
■ S&K Technologies
■ San Manuel Band of Mission Indians
■ Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community
■ Shasta Administrative Services
■ Symbiotic Aquaponic
■ Tule River Aero-Industries
TO WATCH
TURTLE ISLAND COMMUNICATIONS
2017’s 25 NATIVE STEM ENTERPRISES TO WATCH ENTRIES LISTED ALPHABETICALLY
➽ turtleislandcom.com
When Madonna Yawakie grew up on the
Turtle Mountain Reservation in northern North Dakota, phone calls were expensive. Calls to the tribal headquarters, just 14 miles away, were considered long distance. Her parents’ typical monthly phone bill was $300.
When she went to
work for US West
(now CenturyLink)
after earning a master’s
in community and
regional planning, she
realized that because many reservations were in rural areas, traditional telecom- munications companies had little interest in improving their service — or lowering costs.
That lack of infrastructure was crippling development. Today economic growth on reservations — and access to markets — depends on high-speed internet access. Madonna and her
husband, Mel, winner of the 2015 AISES Professional Award for Executive Excellence, are empower- ing tribes to take dramatic strides forward. Since 2001 they’ve owned Minneapolis-based Turtle Island Communications (TICOM),
providing technical and engineering services to tribes in the Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, and Northwest.
TICOM’s goal? To support the development of state-of-the-art broadband systems that are 100 percent tribal owned. “We maximize tribal jurisdiction by placing much of the infrastructure on tribal land,” says Madonna, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. “To us, digital sovereignty is the new sovereignty.”
28 WINDS OF CHANGE • FALL 2018 aises.org