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\u201cThe songs go way back \u2013 before radios and record players,\u201d Wooten says with a smile. \u201cTribal citizens are hungry to know the past. To move forward, you have to know where you\u2019ve been.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat platform allows us to reach folks who definitely wouldn\u2019t have been able to come, not just because of COVID, but because our membership is scattered all over the world,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n
Distance is something Samish people have dealt with for generations.<\/p>\n
The first bits of archeological evidence linked to the Samish tribe \u2013 serrated bison bones and stone butchering tools \u2013are 14,400 years old, carbon dating showed. They were found on Orcas Island, the largest of the San Juan Islands of the Pacific Northwest.<\/p>\n Since the last Ice Age, the region has served as the traditional Samish homeland. When white settlers arrived there in the late 1800s, they began destroying a large Samish community house. In the ensuing decades, those settlers drove out scores of Samish people, creating a regional diaspora.<\/p>\n During World War II, some of the Samish people who had remained in Anacortes found better-paying work in the airline industry or in shipyards far away, causing the tribe to further separate.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat made Samish people unique,\u201d Eastwood says, \u201cwas we had to dig in and find out how to survive by following opportunities elsewhere but also stay connected with our scattered families.<\/p>\n \u201cPart of our present-day story is based on the fact that the tribe hadn\u2019t ever been given its own reservation,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n That far-flung citizenry even earned the Samish a legal nickname \u2013 one that Eastwood loves.<\/p>\n In 1994, the U.S. Department of Interior conducted a hearing on federal recognition of the Samish as an Indian tribe. Administrative Law Judge David Torbett conducted the hearing.<\/p>\n At that time \u2013 the early days of the internet \u2013 tribal leaders already were tech adopters, using cell phones, personal email, and faxes to pull together a dispersed people.<\/p>\n Torbett, who ruled in favor of Samish recognition, recognized their technical savvy. In his opinion, he dubbed the Samish the \u201cCyber Tribe.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt gives me chills, even today,\u201d Eastwood says. \u201cLiterally, it makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck.\u201d<\/p>\n That same digital familiarity remains intact. The tribe has a thriving website, Facebook, and Instagram pages. Most citizens are comfortable using smart phones and apps, Eastwood says.<\/p>\n Their tech acumen also led Samish leaders to select a communication platform that ensured only tribal citizens could participate in the virtual sessions \u2013 particularly when it came to safeguarding the nation\u2019s business information, Wooten says.<\/p>\n The Samish nation is a member of the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC), which seeks to improve the overall cybersecurity posture of the nation\u2019s state, local, tribal and territorial governments. The MS-ISAC is part of the nonprofit Center for Internet Security (CIS).<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cWith the internet the way it is today, we were looking for something that had security,\u201d Wooten says.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been a benefit for folks to interact and know what\u2019s going on. They\u2019re more informed and our participation has gone up during the pandemic,\u201d he adds. \u201cWe\u2019re going to continue to utilize Teams well beyond COVID-19. It has saved us time and money and allowed the government to keep working.\u201d<\/p>\n The recommendation to choose Teams over other platforms came from JR Walters, the Samish nation\u2019s IT director. The selection, Walters says, was rooted in frequent headlines about IT breaches<\/a> and the tribe\u2019s implementation of CIS security controls<\/a>, a set of cybersecurity best practices.<\/p>\n But it was one early, virtual meeting that Walters never will forget, he says. It took place around the time that the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic in March. Samish leaders began holding daily Teams calls to discuss the nation\u2019s situational awareness.<\/p>\n After several of those meetings, participants began to get a better feel for Teams functions, including custom and blurred backgrounds<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/how-a-scattered-indian-nation-kept-its-songs-alive-when-it-couldnt-sing-face-to-face-1.jpg\")
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