Digital Indigenous World (DIW) DIW is the portal or collaboratory which supports the culture and economic development of indigenous communities and empowers individuals therein. It is being initially developed for Indian country in the USA. Its capabilities will support rural communities and indigenous groups throughout the world. Concepts in this project are broadly applicable to any group interested in integrating information technology into their activities. The American Indian Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCU) are the interface for this activity and other MSI's (Minority Serving Institutions) could play a similar role for their communities. DIW is part of a national framework being developed by WHITCU (White House Initiative on Tribal Colleges and Universities) in partnership with many other organizations including AIHEC and AICF. (American Indian Higher Education Consortium; American Indian College Fund) The capability of DIW is illustrated by several pilot projects that have been identified. These include 1) Integration of geographically dispersed but culturally linked communities for communities activities, healthcare, and safety. We identified an example of 8 Indian communities in North Dakota 2) Distance education This can build on existing initiatives 3) Indigenous country based e-commerce 4) Digital libraries of indigenous culture This is exemplified by Virtual Library developed with the University of Michigan 5) Support of coordinated efforts with federal government and industry. The FCC is an example where requests from a group of petitioners have great weight 6) Support of outsourcing (telecommuting) so that indigenous people can work electronically for (information technology) businesses but live in their homeland 7) A project focussing on presentation of material in a culturally appropriate fashion to the different members of an indigenous people. This could build on some of the technologies developed to support "unversal access" DIW requires good infrastructure including high (T1 to DS3) speed networks and community centers with computer and display technology designed to support activities such as the above pilot projects. These centers (digital town halls) would be enhanced by individuals linked in their homes and offices to DIW. DIW requires pilot projects, local infrastructure and in addition national coordination. This overarching effort will support general activities such as promotion and fund raising but also have an important technical role. This includes identification of best practices, and work with relevant national projects (such as NCSA for portal technology and IMS for web-based education standards.) (NCSA is National Computational Science Alliance and IMS is Instructional Management System started by Educause -- www.imsproject.org) The national framework should also support training, national web resources which integrate inherently distributed sites and coordination of the development of pilot projects so that they cover the critical issues. This national technical group would also be a single point of contact for the many organizations that wish to partner with the DIW. As an example, several federal funding opportunities explicitly ask for MSI involvement and in many cases it will be most powerful to link nationally as well as with specific TCU's. Possible Initial Activity (Pilot pilot project) Obtain funding to hire two dedicated staff -- perhaps one associated with NCSA and one with TCU's that are ready to go. Develop the initial DIW portal (e.g. digital.indigenousworld.org) and apply and test in existing distance education projects. As well as an initial involvement with NCSA, I believe the DoD HPCMP (High Performance Computing Modernization Program) University PET activity could be a natural partner.