"Infrastructure is always the foundation on which all other IT investments depend," said Christopher M. Abel, CIO and Director of IT, Citizen of the Potawatomi Nation and a member of TribalNet’s Government and Services Advisory Board.
Christopher M. Abel on why networks are sovereignty
Abel framed network infrastructure not as an IT line item but as the precondition for tribal self-determination in the digital age. In remarks made ahead of Tribal Net 2026, he argued that without networking infrastructure there is no connectivity to internal or external resources, "especially those hosted onsite for the Tribes and on which cybersecurity and AI rely." That line links physical fiber, local hosting and higher-order capabilities such as AI and security into a single prerequisite for tribes seeking control over systems and data.
Tzeitel Buchanan on funding and the guidance problem
Tzeitel Buchanan, Director of Public Sector Programs and Community Partnerships at Lumen and a Citizen of the Cherokee Nation, set out two practical constraints: intermittent funding and the guidance tribes receive when funds do appear. "In short, Tribes are challenged by two factors," Buchanan said. The first is funding. The second is that limited and sporadic funding has pushed tribes toward the least expensive near-term solutions—choices that stretch dollars but can produce technical debt.
Buchanan illustrated the point with a common scenario: a tribe chooses an inexpensive Wi‑Fi solution to connect many homes quickly, then discovers the solution "quickly run[s] out of capacity and create[s] technical debt." That tradeoff—reach now, capacity problems later—frames much of the operational challenge tribes face when planning long-lived infrastructure.
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End the scrambleNTIA grants and the current funding window
Buchanan identified grants from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration as the "gold standard" for network infrastructure funding. This is "the third round of funding offered by the NTIA," and she said it is unlikely there will be another round after this cycle closes in November. She noted, however, that "there will more than likely be a funding bucket available made up of unused or unclaimed funds."
What makes this round different, Buchanan emphasized, is scale: "For this funding cycle, the dollar value is significantly higher than other grant opportunities." That higher dollar value allows tribes to invest in fiber networks with excess capacity—additional strands that "don’t need to be lit immediately and can be used to add capacity as tribes expand, move more data, or use AI."
Concrete projects and partnership models
The source cites several real-world directions for those investments. Tribes are exploring a variety of projects: development of a Tier 3 data center on Navajo land; building resilient networks to enable online education in New Mexico; and creating digital storefronts so tribal artisans "can reach the world." The Osage Nation in Oklahoma is mentioned as exploring public-private partnerships as one delivery model, and the Rural Healthcare Transformation Program delivered by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid is identified as another funding avenue that can support network infrastructure.
What this means for technologists, policymakers, and tribal citizens
- Technologists and security teams: The emphasis on onsite hosting, fiber capacity and resilience connects directly to cybersecurity and future AI workloads. Abel’s point that networking is foundational implies that architects must prioritize capacity planning and resilience to avoid recurring technical debt.
- Policymakers and funders: Buchanan’s account highlights timing and scale. The NTIA third-round grants and the possibility of unclaimed funds create a narrow policy window where larger-dollar awards can enable future-proof builds—dark fiber strands and extra lit capacity—that outlast single grant cycles.
- Tribal citizens and local economies: The source links better infrastructure to tangible services—telehealth, online education, well‑paying jobs, and enhanced public safety—and to a deeper form of control: data sovereignty that can "sustain Tribal law and identity through data sovereignty," as Buchanan put it.
The record in this account is straightforward: tribes face a choice between short-term reach and long-term runway, and incoming federal grants present an opportunity to tilt toward the latter. With the global economy described in the source as "on the cusp of the fifth industrial revolution, driven by AI, automation, connected services, and data-intensive technologies," the timing matters. The practical decisions—how to spend NTIA dollars, whether to include excess dark capacity, and how to pair grants with partnerships like those explored by the Osage Nation—will determine whether investments deliver sustained sovereignty or only temporary connectivity.
Tribal Net 2026 will be a focal point for these conversations; for tribes the immediate task is tactical: secure the larger-dollar grants while designing networks that preserve future options for capacity, governance, and control of tribal data. The source leaves that planning path clear: invest in infrastructure now that lets tribes host, secure and scale services on their own terms.
