| TRACI MORRIS, PhD (Chickasaw), Executive Director of Arizona State University’s American Indian Policy Institute

| GEOFFREY BLACKWELL, JD (Chickasaw, Choctaw, Omaha, and Muscogee Creek), General Counsel and Chief Operating Officer of the National Congress of American Indian

While many Tribal Nations are confronting the challenges of maintaining and controlling their own data, Tribal Nations are also using broadband funding to build networks, take care of data that flows through their networks, protect cultural attributes, digital equity community planning, and other digital projects.  In order to achieve full participation in our society, democracy, and economy, the necessity for decided and explicit definitions and uses of broadband access terms has become apparent.  For instance, the term Data Sovereignty is widely used, and there are National Congress of American Indians resolutions on the subject.  However, this term is often confused with the term Digital Sovereignty, which is simply a more comprehensive view of the digital world.  Some literature uses the terms interchangeably, but they do not mean the same thing and should not be confused.