"Necessity is the mother of invention." That's what one of us should have said when we met all those years back on January 24th, 2005 in the dungeon of the Coeur d'Alene Tribal IT Department. Me and my staff were throwing ideas around about how we could use technology to preserve our tribal language, history, and culture. We talked about how having access to broadband was going to blurr the lines between technologies, and that once we got our own broadband network up and running we would be able to deliver voice, video, and data over the same pipe. Newberger, Jonathan, and I were brainstorming about developing a website where tribal people could create, upload, and share their own videos, music, and podcasts with each other and with tribal people across the nation.
At the time all we had was a good idea. The technology didn't exist to do it easily. We didn't have broadband on the reservation. We didn't have two 120' communication towers . We didn't have a Tribal Technology Center, and we definitely didn't have two terabytes of server space to fill. What we did have were tribal members with creative minds, energetic tribal youth who always seemed to have smiles for any cameras nearby, and tribal elders with stories to tell.
In order to make this work, we knew we would either have to find a way or make one ourselves. We began with the end in mind. Before we even broke ground on building out our broadband infrastructure, the first concrete step we took was to reserve the domain name "rezcast." That didn't work, so a co-worker came up with the idea to spell it with a "k." The heavens opened, our ancestors sang, and RezKast was born. We were on our way.
After three long years of collaborative tribal sweat building the Technology Center and broadband infrastructure, we have finally come to a point where invention can take shape. RezKast is the place where we can create our own tribal shows, our own tribal programming, and our own native content. It is our hope and intent that tribal people will use technology's greatest strengths to preserve their greatest truths.