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Tribal members struggle with slow speeds, something officials say they are working on after laying down more fiber-optic cable

A recent broadband grant from the state is allowing Santo Domingo Pueblo to continue its internet expansion efforts, this time to nearby communities.

Making sure the internet is actually high-speed, both in and beyond the Pueblo, is still in the works.

New Mexico’s broadband office on Sept. 7 announced a $9.2 million grant for Santo Domingo Pueblo to connect hundreds of homes and businesses with fiber.

$66.8 million grants total

The money is coming from the Connect New Mexico Pilot Program that gave Pueblos nearly $35 million. Internet and phone companies received $32 million.

This allows people who never had connectivity before to get set up with internet.

The award is supplementing a $12.7 million federal grant the Santo Domingo Pueblo got in 2022 that allowed officials to start work to hook up hundreds of homes to fiber-optic internet.

Using the total $21.9 million in state and federal funds, Santo Domingo Pueblo anticipates it’ll be able to connect 870 buildings total with 50 miles of fiber laid down.

Tribal leaders and members, joined by a couple state officials, celebrated the funding at an event on Tuesday at the Santo Domingo Trading Post, where the Pueblo’s technology department has set up.

Frank White, information technology director for Santo Domingo Pueblo, said Santo Domingo is the only Pueblo that’s gotten both of these state and federal broadband funds.

White (Zuni) said the newer internet expansion efforts will go beyond Santo Domingo Pueblo to the small non-tribal neighboring communities of Sile and Peña Blanca, an expansion officials have previously expressed interest in.

White said nearly no homes in Sile and Peña Blanca have internet. Local residents and businesses wrote letters of support for Santo Domingo Pueblo’s plans in their areas.

“A lot of the time for a small community like this, it’s just too expensive,” White said. “That’s why we’re trying to expand the area. We’re going to offer affordable internet.”

The Pueblo plans to connect 529 homes within its own borders, 277 homes in Peña Blanca and 64 homes in Sile, according to maps at the event.

The project is still in the planning stages. White said work to get permits and map routes are done.

Santo Domingo Pueblo is using 3D printers to make materials for other infrastructure projects that could come in handy for this work, too. White said officials could use 3D-printed parts to replace those that break.

“When we get farther into the project, we will probably figure out what we need,” he said.

Slow speeds

Something that still remains an issue is internet speed.

Tribal member Florence Calabaza got internet about a year or two ago, after the height of the pandemic. Calabaza (Kewa) said the technology has really helped her life, but the speeds are still really slow.

Similarly, when Doris Mina’s two daughters try to do their online schoolwork, they sometimes struggle with how much the internet at home lags.

Mina (Santo Domingo) said she hopes increased speeds will come in the future and benefit students.

That’s something the Pueblo is working on. White said there will be more emphasis on faster speeds once fiber is laid down everywhere.

“We’ll start increasing the speeds to something competitive with major areas like Albuquerque,” he said.

Looking back. Looking forward.

Multiple tribal officials commented on how the pandemic accelerated the Pueblo’s broadband initiative.

Herman Sanchez is the tribal administrator. He said internet access can be life-changing, recalling roadblocks students and parents in Santo Domingo Pueblo faced during the first few months of the pandemic as classes went online but people didn’t have internet access.

“The pandemic was devastating,” he said. “But we wanted to turn something bad into something good.”

COVID-19 is still around. However, Santo Domingo’s precautions to limit non-tribal members from entering the Pueblo, mask mandates and other efforts have stopped. So have some of the issues with internet connectivity.

By August 2020, five months into the pandemic and when school was starting up again, Santo Domingo Pueblo connected over 700 homes to the internet, according to data from the Pueblo.

Now, over three years later, tribal members can connect to the Pueblo’s own internet service subscription with different plans that offer varying speeds.

Santo Domingo council member Joe Aguilar said all of this broadband work never would’ve happened without the pandemic.

“The future is right here in fiber optics, in broadband,” he said.

White said officials plan to keep pursuing state or federal funding to keep the broadband expansion going.

“Once we hook these up, we’re actually thinking about expanding to some of the other smaller communities around here that are underserved,” he said.

He said the Pueblo wants to eventually build an IT center and a training center so Santo Domingo Pueblo could teach other tribes about this kind of broadband work.

Staff from Sen. Ben Ray Luján and Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández’s offices attended the event to congratulate the Pueblo and commit to continuing work to ensure that people get connected to high-speed internet in New Mexico.

“This must continue to be our national priority, and we’re not going to stop until we get there together,” Luján’s representative said, reading the senator’s remarks.

New Mexico Broadband Office Operations Manager Drew Lovelace announced at the event on Tuesday that he’d be stepping in as interim director as current director Kelly Schlegel retires.

He said he wants to ensure that the broadband office is serving all parts of New Mexico, including Santo Domingo Pueblo and other tribes across the state.

“We are here to continue to work,” he said.

Sanchez hopes revenue generated by Santo Domingo Pueblo’s broadband efforts will go to other industries, like education and health care. He said this could be an economic driver that will allow the Pueblo to reinvest money into itself.

“The money’s going to stay here in New Mexico. It’s going to stay here in Santo Domingo,” he said. “And that’s what’s exciting.”

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Santo Domingo Pueblo News:

Santo Domingo Pueblo held a celebratory event this morning at the historic Santo Domingo Trading Post to celebrate its $9.22 million in award funding from the Connect New Mexico Program.

This funding, plus the $5.8 million allocated from the Santo Domingo Pueblo, will complete the connection of 870 units in the Pueblo and surrounding communities of Sile and Peña Blanca with 50 miles of fiber. The project complements a separate fiber span funded by the NTIA Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program.

In sum, these projects will greatly benefit thousands of residents, businesses, and community institutions for generations ahead.

Governor Esquipula Tenorio of Santo Domingo Pueblo shared this sentiment and optimism for the future, “With every connection, every click, and every opportunity embraced, Internet access becomes the empowering force that bridges the digital divide between Santo Domingo Pueblo and the rest of the world. It illuminates the path to knowledge, amplifies our voices, ignites a flame of hope, and leads Santo Domingo Pueblo towards self-sufficiency, uniting us in a journey toward a future where dreams know no boundaries.”

Sandeep Taxali from the Office of Broadband Access and Expansion (OBAE) highlighted the strong application Santo Domingo Pueblo brought forward and their extensive collaborative efforts with OBAE.

“What really impressed the review team was the fact that during the pandemic, the leadership among Santo Domingo set up a wireless network—grown from the community,” Taxali said. “They came together to deploy, test, and launch the network. It was a beautiful story, showing the level of commitment, focus, and success in executing a project.”

A representative from Senator Luján’s office commented on behalf of the Senator, stating, “If there is one thing I’ve focused on as the Chair of the Communications, Media, and Broadband Subcommittee, it’s to make sure broadband reaches everyone. We can design and build the single greatest network, but that won’t accomplish much if it’s only available to a privileged few. Inclusivity is key when we discuss the future of broadband.”

A representative from Congresswoman Teresa Ledger Fernandez’s office commented on behalf of the Congresswoman, stating, “Affordable access to the internet is the key to our future. One of the first caucuses she joined after being elected was the Rural Broadband Task Force. She worked to help pass bipartisan infrastructure laws to make sure places like Santo Domingo can get affordable high-speed internet access.”

“We had zero internet anywhere on the reservation. So parents would have to drive their children up to I-25 to park, and the kids would have to do their homework on their cell phone,” Santo Domingo Pueblo Tribal Administrator Herman Sanchez said about online learning access during the earliest stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Santo Domingo (Kewa) Pueblo in Sandoval County has since secured $12.7 million in funding for resources to expand internet access. The expansion is funded through the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program, which is part of President Joe Biden’s Investing in America agenda. The program is also providing funding to communities throughout New Mexico, including communities in Santa Fe, Bernalillo, Torrance and Sandoval counties.

“This award is part of the single largest investment in high-speed internet in history, and it’s bridging the digital divide by building fiber-optic cable made in America,” said Senior Advisor to the President and White House Infrastructure Coordinator Mitch Landrieu at a press conference on Thursday.

The Santo Domingo Pueblo first took matters into its own hands in May 2020, when it began to implement solar panels to help with connectivity at the pueblo. There was a seven-month wait for antenna brackets at the time.

“We couldn’t wait seven months. So we printed a prototype,” Sanchez said. “We started out with zero. We were using my IT director’s 3D printer at home.”

3D printers inside Santo Domingo Trading Post on Thursday, July 6 (Lauren Lifke)

As the project progressed, the tribe invested in its own 3D printer to expand production. Now, these 3D printed brackets are on all 700 homes on the reservation.

Internet connectivity became available to every home on the Pueblo in August 2020.

With the help of the nearly $13 million in federal funding, the tribe will now have even wider access to resources. It is expanding its current fiber-optic connectivity, which will be put into every single home on the Pueblo.

Fiber-optic material that will provide connectivity to the Santo Domingo Pueblo and areas surrounding it (Lauren Lifke

The new funding allows the cable to connect to the long-standing trading post, which members of the community will work on.

“We’re not offering jobs; we’re offering careers,” Sanchez said.

The project will put economy dollars back into the community and expand broadband to communities outside of Santo Domingo, including Sile, Cochiti Pueblo and Peña Blanca, which Santo Domingo provides internet to.

“Because we’re one of three Indian tribes in the entire country that owns our own internet company,” Sanchez said.

The tribe has also applied for the Connect New Mexico Grant, a program that was announced in 2022. It is designed to cover up to 75% of total project costs for network expansion, which can help to complete the Santo Domingo project.

Tribal leaders and government officials in the Santo Domingo Trading Post on Thursday, July 6 (Lauren Lifke)

Now, tribal leaders are working on a solar field, a 5,000-square-foot IT administration building, a $64 million wastewater project, restructuring a $14 million clean water project, a training center where other tribes and businesses can learn how to operate the servers, a data center for storage and a $15 million child care center, which broke ground last month and is expected to be ready in 2024.

“We’re trying to build something here, for our own people. So we can bring economic development within Santo Domingo,” Sanchez said.

The federal Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provided the funding. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced the $675 million investment for the state in a press conference on Thursday, where Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information April McClain-Delaney spoke.

“Whether you live in a city, in rural areas, or on tribal lands, internet access isn’t a luxury — it is a necessity,” McClain-Delaney said.

Because of inflation, tribal leaders had to downsize their federally funded internet expansion projects. It’s an issue other Indigenous communities are facing, too.

SANTO DOMINGO PUEBLO — From having very little internet access at all to setting up a Pueblo-wide service network over the past few years, Santo Domingo leaders are working to expand broadband services in a self-sufficient way.

They’re now in the process of creating the Pueblo’s first large-scale solar farm, a project that’ll help get energy to internet towers to boost broadband services.

A $12.7 million federal grant awarded to Santo Domingo Pueblo in 2022 is helping fund this project, along with other private grant dollars.

Other tribal nations that also recently received federal broadband funding are struggling with supply chain issues in their internet expansion.

Santo Domingo Pueblo developed a workaround.

The Pueblo is using 3D printers to create the parts needed to build energy and internet infrastructure.

“We can’t find what we need so we created our own,” tribal administrator Herman Sanchez said.

Tribal leaders showed state and federal officials the 3D printing process in-person on Thursday at a site where contractors are laying down fiber underground.

Frank White is the Santo Domingo Pueblo information technology director. He said 3D printing allows the Pueblo to obtain certain types of hardware that are difficult to get right now because of supply chain issues, something that the pandemic intensified. He said the Pueblo is also in touch with specific vendors that can access hard-to-find equipment.

“We’re trying to get creative,” he said.

White said a lot of work has already gotten done on the solar project, and expects it to be completed in another couple of years.

Lindsey Abeita (Kewa) is a digital content producer for the Pueblo. She said the 3D printing methodology allows the Pueblo to expand its internet presence independently.

“So we can be a self-sustaining Pueblo,” she said.

Sanchez said federal funding makes all this work possible. He said the Pueblo has the capacity to get it done but needs a little help to make it to that point.

Federal delegation members listened to Sanchez and White explain the 3D printing process and what the tribal leaders are doing with the funds that the federal government gave them last year.

U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández told Source NM it’s exciting how the Pueblo is getting all of this work done this way.

She said other tribal nations could emulate what Santo Domingo is doing, a Pueblo that she said has “taken the lead in terms of looking at how to create the internet.”

She said she thinks it’s great that these broadband services are creating careers for tribal members. “We are here to celebrate that,” she said.

Leger Fernández said internet can also help with language preservation.

Abetia said there needs to be a concentrated effort to make sure that actually happens.

She said there could be a “conflict with language and culture” as more and more households are connected to internet. Particularly with younger kids, she said, they could get distracted online instead of learning about their culture.

“I feel like we have a balance,” she said. “I know it just comes within the household.”

Federal funds may not be enough for other projects

The $12.7 million is also funding other projects.

White said it will allow the Pueblo to hook up over 300 households to fiber internet, set up a new IT building and create more internet towers.

But tribal leaders are encountering challenges with inflation, White said. He said it’s causing issues with how far officials can go with this federal broadband grant.

Federal grants no longer enough to fully connect Native communities to high-speed internet

SANTA CLARA PUEBLO — While the sun beamed down on old adobe houses outside on Wednesday, a group of tribal and federal officials gathered inside to analyze a mostly red map detailing a lack of good internet access across Santa Clara Pueblo. Work is in progress to change that. Last year, Santa Clara Pueblo was … Continue reading Federal grants no longer enough to fully connect Native communities to high-speed internet

That’s something other tribal communities also awarded federal funds last year are struggling with, too.

“We don’t know whether the funding will actually complete all the projects that we had planned,” White said.

He said the Pueblo has already had to cut down on how many households officials can connect to broadband.

White pointed in the distance toward a cluster of homes. For example, he said, officials initially planned to connect around 70 of those homes to better internet services but had to cut that down by about 30 households.

Expanding beyond the Pueblo

Before 2015, Santo Domingo had little to no internet.

The Pueblo joined the Middle Rio Grande Tribal Consortium in 2015, laying down fiber between the Santo Domingo, Santa Ana, San Felipe and Cochiti Pueblos, according to a presentation from White and Sanchez.

That infrastructure allowed tribal officials to set up a free Pueblo-wide wireless internet system in 2020, connecting over 700 homes by the end of the year, according to the presentation slides. In 2021, the officials added faster speeds that people can pay more for.

Sanchez said they now want to expand their internet services beyond the Pueblo borders, getting access to the Peña Blanca community and the city of Sile, areas underserved by major broadband providers.

Santo Domingo recently applied for a state broadband grant and plans to connect almost 1,200 homes to fiber internet if the tribal community gets the money and the Pueblo council approves, according to the presentation.

U.S. Sens. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luján said they applaud Santo Domingo for setting up these internet services.

Heinrich said he remembers visiting Santo Domingo at the beginning of the pandemic when there was very little fiber installed. He said the Pueblo has come a long way in three years.

“Just to recognize what you’ve accomplished here — I think it’s brilliant,” Heinrich said.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said at a broadband conference later on Thursday in Santa Fe that tribal nations are leading the way for broadband expansion efforts.

“We’re going to be the first state with sovereign nations fully connected in the country,” she said. “It is powerful.”

MASS Design Group has announced its acquisition of Santa Fe, New Mexico-based Atkin Olshin Schade Architects (AOS) in a move they say will offer an enhancement of the relationship the two have built already through years of collaboration.

The merger makes the new combined entity Santa Fe’s largest architectural office, with further opportunity to leverage AOS’s Philadelphia operation in order to pursue “innovative approaches to preservation, adaptive reuse, and design for mission-focused organizations throughout the northeast and nationally.”

It comes just under a month after MASS’s co-founder Michael Murphy left the firm to take a position on faculty at Georgia Tech University, handing over the reins to his former Senior Principal and Managing Director Christian Benimana and Patricia Gruits as well as the firm’s co-founder and current Chief Design Officer Alan Ricks.

“After collaborating — and being neighbors — for years, we are excited to bring our teams together under one roof,” Shawn Evans, the previous Principal of AOS’s Santa Fe office, said of their partnership. “There is excitement for what the future holds given the incredible talent brought together with this partnership. We are pleased to join the MASS team and know that it will help us provide capacity in the Santa Fe community and beyond for years to come.”

MASS Principal Jospeh Kunkel has been working with Evans for over a decade on projects such as the Wa-Di housing development that serves Santa Fe’s Indigenous community. Kunkel, who is a citizen of the Northern Cheyenne Nation, has since been instrumental in developing the Sustainable Native Communities Design Lab at MASS along with AOS and will be aided by the addition of new Senior Principal Garron Yepa and Jemez Pueblo, who are members of the Navajo (Diné) and Walatowa nations respectively.

“This partnership strengthens our capacity to mentor and train the next generation of Native and non-Native designers, who are committed to addressing Indian Country’s biggest challenges,” Kunkel said finally.

With the merger, the new combined offices will have a total of 18 staffers.