WASHINGTON – Telephone subscribership on federally-recognized Indian reservations jumped nearly 50 percent between 1990 and 2000, according to a study by the Federal Communications Commission. However, the study misses a lot of Native people, since it does not include Native Hawaiians and just about all Alaska Natives.
FCC studied surveys done for the 2000 Census which estimated 67.9 percent of all Native households on federal reservations and off-reservation trust lands had telephone service, up from 46.6 percent in 1990. The estimates were made from a one in six sample of those that responded to the Census Bureau survey, and were for both owner-occupied and renter-occupied units. There was no distinction made between wireless service or land lines.
FCC said it will “continue to work with federally-recognized American Indian tribes and Alaska Native villages to ensure that tribes and persons residing on tribal lands have access to telecommunications and information services,” and it pointed to the Telecommunications Act of 1996 as a spur to growth.
Data on Alaska Native phone subscribership is practically non-existent, though, as only the Annette Island Reserve was included in the survey, thus skipping more than 200 Native villages. (Service at Annette Island was estimated at 95.9 percent.)
Federal Native areas in three Northeastern states – Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, showed 100 percent telephone penetration. Just one state, Arizona, had less than 50 percent, at 49.9 percent. Utah, New Mexico and Mississippi came in at between 50 and 60 percent of American Indian households.
Of course, many non-Natives live in federal Indian areas, and factoring them in, total telephone penetration was 83.1 percent. Interestingly, the survey tallied more non-Indian households than Native ones – an estimated 302,208 total housing units, with 140,454 of them occupied by Indians.
FCC also measured results using a larger cohort, people on federal, state and tribally designated statistical areas. Here, 77 percent of estimated Indian households (240,620) had phone service, while 93.6 percent of total households (nearly 2 million) did. The biggest variation is Georgia, not on the federal list; with just 19 percent Indian phone penetration. However, this was for only 21 households on the Tama state reservation.
Some tiny California rancherias registered zero phone penetration, but the samples were just for two or three homes. The Goshute Reservation of Nevada and Utah was the next lowest, at 9.4 percent of an estimated 32 housing units.
Some 70 Indian areas registered 100 percent phone service, but many of these were based on tiny numbers also. The largest sample estimate of Indian homes to register 100 percent, 872, was on the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation in New York.
The nation’s largest Indian reservation, the Navajo Nation, remained an outpost of non-connectivity. Just 37.4 percent of an estimated 45,623 Native homes there had telephone service.
The nation’s most populous tribe, the Cherokee nation of Oklahoma, showed 88.2 percent Native phone penetration in its Oklahoma service area.
South Dakota’s nine reservations each had more than two-thirds signed up with the phone company, ranging from 68.9 percent at Standing Rock to 88.8 percent at Flandreau.
New Mexico’s Apache nations and pueblos also were each above two thirds, ranging from 67.2 percent at San Felipe to 91.3 percent at Jemez.
Arizona’s tribes showed a wide variation, with the Navajo the lowest (they were included in Arizona, even though they also are in New Mexico and Utah), and the Fort Mojave reservation the highest, at 91.7 percent.