Fellowship recipient advocates for increased Cherokee Internet use
By Harrison Okin
Jongkind, a nutrition major, lived on a reservation in the town of Cherokee for two months last summer and gathered information to develop a website that raises awareness about Type 2 diabetes.
“This type of diabetes is directly related to weight,” she said. “We need to encourage programs with nutrition and physical activity.”
Jongkind said most Cherokee are not accustomed to using the Internet. As a result, she said the Cherokee often suffer from preventable conditions like diabetes because they lack the ability to use online resources.
If so, that also would be true of the rural non-Cherokees who live near the rural Cherokees. The problem would be the people's remote location, not their ethnicity.
Since the Eastern Cherokee have a tribal government, a casino, schools, clinics, a newspaper, businesses, historical and cultural attractions, etc., you can be sure they've heard about the Internet. The article obviously promoted the stereotypical notion of Indians as primitive people of the past.
For more on stereotypical thinking about Indians, see Rename the Dodgers "Yang-nas"? and Search for the Ultimate Warrior Proposal.
4 comments:
This sounds so stupid. I used to live there, I've visited plenty. Sure, not everyone has internet in their homes but certainly they've been exposed to it either in school or somewhere else.. it is 2011 despite the rural location. Chief Hicks has done a lot to bring more internet access to Qualla Boundary. Neighboring towns have the same problems with getting high speed internet in the heart of Appalachia. --Not to mention there are GIGANTIC billboards everywhere in Cherokee telling people to eat fruit and every clinic hands out brochures. The EB Cherokee people I know aren't ignorant. Maybe if healthy foods were more available/affordable people would eat them more.
Ha! The tribe already owns a big chunk of its regional broadband provider.
http://www.advantagewest.com/content.cfm/content_id/139/section/regional
Idiotic, I agree! There must have been a complete breakdown of communication between the reporter and me because this is NOT what I said. Actually, type 2 diabetes didn’t emerge in AI communities until white people introduced processed foods. The idea that this disease is caused by a lack of online resources is completely ridiculous. When I studied internet use rates, I found that the majority do use the internet, not the other way around. My research was focused on using a website (one created by the Cherokee Health and Medical Division) to advertise tribal health programs. My research showed the web-based health promotion may be effective in rural communities, such as Cherokee.
Thanks for writing, Kaitlyn. The correction implies the problem was attributable to the writer and the newspaper, not to you. Now you've confirmed it.
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