The Virtual Tribe
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This is the electronic community created by linking people and
information resources. Collaboration technology is used to
implement such a virtual community (see below). Eventually sophisticated
"virtual reality" could be used to implement "physically realistic"
environments. Today one implements the community straightforwardly
as a collection of tools and information displays.

The virtual tribe can include shared viewing of digital artifacts
and customized displays respecting cultural constraints. It can support
planning and interaction tools that reflect tribal tradition in information
dissemination and decision making.

The virtual tribe has two faces; it enables Indians to leave the tribal lands
but still enjoy aspects of tribal life. This could encourage some
to leave as they can still be part of the tribe. The flip side is that
Indians who would leave anyway to still be part of the tribe.

Some Remarks on Current Collaboratory Technologies
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Collaboratory Systems can encompass asynchronous exchange of
information as in digital libraries or portals like Yahoo.
Synchronous collaboration systems are illustrated by leading commercial Systems
WebeX and Centra  aimed at business collaboration and training
There are several research efforts enhancing capability. For instance, the
Access Grid from ANL/NCSA supports higher end Audio-Video conferencing
compared to Hearme and Lipstream -- most popular commercial systems.
Michigan has pioneered scientific collaboratories.
NetMeeting and similar systems are pretty succesful in synchronous distance education
Blackboard and WebCT are pretty succesful in asynchronous distance education


Multi - Function Collaboratory
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One can architect collaboratories as a set of a core services (user customization,
object access, event bus, archiving ....) and a set of core capabilities
(shared documents, chat rooms, annotation, A/V conferencing, white board ..)
Then you organize these capabilities and add special functions (collaborative
visualization for a Computing Collaboratory, collaborative planner for control
center, collaborative quizzes in distance education ...) This leads to
virtual classrooms, virtual mission control centers etc.
One can use this approach to build a collaboratory to address IT, community or
learning needs of Tribes/Tribal Colleges

Multi - Cultural Collaboratory
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	User customization is familiar in Portals like Yahoo. This "universal
access" capability is obviously important to address special needs of
users -- whether due to disabilities, culture or whims.
	Synchronous collaboration systems fall into two broad classes; if one
shares "display" (frame-buffer), then this cannot be customized for each user
(except in trivial ways). In the shared event model, one shares the object
specification and can render object separately for each user. Either collaboration
methodology can support collaboration between disparate devices e.g. collaboration
between different users; some with hand-held devices, some with conventional workstations 
or some with large screen or CAVE like devices. The shared event model is the
richest in this case of disparate displays.

	If we build the "Virtual Tribe" on a local, national or international level
then we can allow the user profiling to customize interface to respect
culture and custom. This implies use of shared event model for synchronous
collaboration.