PYRAMID LAKE PAIUTE TRIBE
(PLPT)
SITE VISIT 9/3-9/4/02

PYRAMID LAKE PAIUTE TRIBE
(PLPT)
SITE VISIT 9/3-9/4/02

9/3/02

The meeting took place at the PLPT Educational Center. The following people were in attendance:

Alan Mandell, Tribal Chairman, PLPT
Carolyn Harry, Higher Education Coordinator, PLPT
Greg Gardner, Technology Services Director, PLPT
Janet Usinger, Associate Professor, Research and Educational Planning Center,
College of Education, University of Nevada, Reno (UNR)
Fred B. Lokken, Associate Dean for Teaching Technologies, Truckee Meadows Community
College (TMCC)

Chairman Mandell began the meeting by discussing the difficulties of moving directly from an agrarian ranching culture to a technological one. This leapfrog scenario causes many problems with continuity and capacity building on the Reservation. This factor should be kept in mind when looking at possible educational initiatives.

The main focus of the meeting was to discuss programming and content. Although University of Nevada at Reno is primarily concerned with research and the managerial aspects of AISEP, Janet Usinger is interested in not only what UNR could provide, but also what kind of content could emanate from PLPT. Alan is also looking to highlight information that is unique to Pyramid Lake Tribe. Courses, workshops, and/or trainings dealing with alternative energy (geothermal), water resource rights, and local environmental issues are all possibilities:

Geothermal and other alternative energy forms
Currently there are 165 geothermal sites under the Western State initiative. Having PLPT provide on-site training via video-conferencing or multicast, Nevada could export it to the other 10 western states. Alan is a big proponent of this initiative.

Water resource issues
The Truckee River is the only drainage way for Lake Tahoe. The water deposits into Pyramid Lake on the PLPT Reservation, but a good deal of this water is diverted before it reaches its destination. These diversions cause a number of problems with the Truckee River and Pyramid Lake watersheds including fish population decreases, lake and river temperature increases, and water quality and quantity changes.

Tall White Top infestations along the Truckee River
After the meeting, Alan took me to the S-Bar-S Ranch owned and operated by UNR. Here I met with Ranch Manager Bill Inman who took over the farm a year ago. Up to this time the ranch focused on cattle issues. Bill is interested in the control of Tall White Top, an Asian invasive weed, that affects 17 million acres of public rangeland in the Western Us and has worked itself along the entire length of the Truckee River. The weed, a ribosome, is a perfect specimen that is nearly unstoppable. The three approaches taken to control it are: burning or laser leveling, pesticide use, and sheep grazing. Any of the three practiced alone have side effects. Bill is incorporating them all into a three-prong approach towards controlling the exotic. By doing so, he has been able to reverse the damage on sixty some acres of the 167 acre parcel. The opportunity for distance training seems obvious.

9/4/02

At breakfast I met with Carolyn and her sister Deborah Harry, Executive Director of the Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism (IPCB). This important Council is "organized to assist indigenous peoples in the protection of their genetic resources, indigenous knowledge, and cultural and human rights from the negative effects of biotechnology". Some of their current primers include "Indians, Genes and Genetics: What Indians should know about the New Biotechnology" and "Life, Lineage, and Sustenance: Indigenous Peoples and the Genetic Engineering of Food, Agriculture and the Environment". These primers are excellent resources. We discussed the possibilities of Deborah using them to do a multicast on Biocolonialism.

The next meeting took place at Truckee Meadows Community College.

Fred Lokken began the day by providing a tour of TMCC's beautiful campus. We discussed the possibility of PLPT participating in the LAN/CAPPA initiative currently be explored at TMCC. The program was initially funded under NSF to have math and science teachers create on-line courses using open-source code. Having created a decent base of 86 courses the project now looks to expand by also creating on-line humanities courseware. This initiative would provide PLPT education center with access to on-line courses that would initially have common course numbers with TMCC. PLPT could explore independence in the relative future (3-5 years) depending on the realization of creating a traditional or virtual tribal college at Pyramid Lake. TMCC is also placing a branch of their library at the PLPT educational center. Much of their library is accessible over the web, but there will be physical volume available as well.

The people involved in this effort have some great ideas on programming and content. We now need to move from concepts to practice.

I want to say a special thank you to Carolyn Harry for her hospitality in showing me the area surrounding Pyramid Lake over the Labor Day weekend preceding the meetings. Packing Burning Man, a Pow-Wow, Lake Tahoe, Los Lobos at Reno Rib Fest, and Yosemite into two days was tiring but wonderful. Thanks again Carolyn.

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Craig Campbell
Project Coordinator for
Tribal Colleges and Indian Affairs
American Distance Education Consortium (ADEC)
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