Greetings from the Navajo & Hopi Nations

["Chris O'Shea Heydinger" <chriso@dnalegalservices.org>]

I work for DNA-People's Legal Services, a nonprofit law firm that provides free legal assistance to low-income people living on and near the Navajo and Hopi Nations in AZ, NM & UT.  We recently received a Technology Initiatives Grant from the Legal Services Corporation to build an online library of community resource information.  We plan to use satellite technology to make the information available on touch-screen kiosks located in the lobbies of our nine offices.  The information will be available in text, audio and video, with much of the contents translated into oral Navajo and/or Hopi.  Much of our client population does not speak or read English, and their native languages are traditionally oral only.  Further, there are only a handful of libraries in our huge service area.  By making information available in native languages, we hope to use technology to overcome the last obstacle to bridging the digital divide in Native America.

I am very interested in including environmental information on our website, and disseminating that information in Navajo and Hopi.

I look forward to participating in this discussion.

Chris O'Shea Heydinger