Balancing Life Without Internet

It wouldn’t be the start of a new semester without raging internet connection issues leading up to and throughout the first week. My schedule was picked out mid-month, and that was probably the last moment I had a good connection. Someone reading this will probably think, “How would she have survived dial-up?” The kicker: I did. We still had dial up when most people, save a few grandparents here and there, had already upgraded. I don’t know how I did it. I guess everything wasn’t so online like it is now, so it wasn’t really a second thought for me.

That’s a benefit and a curse, I think. Being an online student, I have a lot of praise for the digital world we’re living in. Without it, I wouldn’t be getting an education. I’ve been able to take so many amazing courses and learn from some of the best instructors I’ve ever had because of online education. This semester I’ll even be doing an independent study of Native American literature.

I’m thinking of doing a poetry-focused study, and I’ve already started planning different Native poets I would like to include (cross your fingers for me! I reached out to a poet I really look up to about a potential ARC and my information was sent to their publisher). I want to look at well-known Native poets like Joy Harjo, of course, but I also want to examine some of the up-and-coming Native poets in publishing, like Kinsale Drake. There are also those who self-publish, like Tala Tootoosis, and voices local to me like Alex DeRoin.

Portfolio building has been the hard part of higher education, I think. We’re taught to build up our resume, but doing things just to have a good resume isn’t much in sync with the community work we do as Native peoples. I tend to look at those things as secondary to my decision instead of letting my portfolio guide me. But I have to say, this study offers me a unique opportunity to build something that could be used to teach other students and strengthen my portfolio, which is exciting!

So it’s only the first week, but it’s been a good one. I’m just trying to focus on the positives instead of all of the things that stress me out—like this lack of internet—and really just get back into the headspace I need to be in to produce quality work and do good research. Something I’ve been doing this week to distract myself from a lot of the noise is more artwork. I don’t bead when I’m not in a good headspace because beading is supposed to be good medicine, so I’ve been focusing on digital art and trying to expand my skills there. The best part? I don’t need internet for that.

In the image above is my Native Dolly, aka Dolly but with Native imagery. It’s inspired by the outfit she wore for her travel stop ribbon cutting. Originally, the image I’d seen was so low quality that I thought it was a jingle dancer at first, and then I noticed it was Dolly in a dress as glam as ever. In my drawing, I’ve gone ahead and given her some gold jingle cones to honor the good medicine in the humanitarian work she has done; cedar, the traditional medicine of my people because that’s almost what it looked like was embroidered on her dress; pink conch accents, because she still needed some glam stones; and butterfly earrings based on my own beadwork to represent her iconic butterfly iconography. I’ll be turning it into a language poster when my internet is back up.

Chi hullo li bilia.

Bridgette Hoshont’omba is a student at Nebraska Indian Community College.