Abstract
The first inhabitants of what we today call Idaho were the people of the American Indian Tribes we now call in English the Kootenai, the Coeur D’Alene, the Nez Perce, the Shoshone-Bannock, the Shoshone-Paiute and countless other tribes and bands that are unrecognized, unrecorded, or unremembered. Since the termination era, the U.S. Federal Government has adopted the paradigm of sovereign Nation to sovereign Nations, and as the movement to revitalize Indigenous cultures and Indigenous languages continues to grow, can internet connected technology and mobile technology support these nations and their language learners of all ages? The cultures and language of Indigenous peoples in The United States, generally and Idaho specifically, have survived despite exterminationist colonial policies and programs from the Code of Indian Offenses to residential schools. However, intracultural Indigenous language transmission is in decline due to underinvestment in tribal schools, the trauma of residential schools (especially regarding language), and the cultural stigma against non-English languages in the United States. Indigenous people utilize custom-built mobile applications and appropriate others like Facebook to host and share language resources. The five federally recognized tribes already use some internet-connected and mobile technology to facilitate their language classes, through general educational software and social media. However, no application from any of the Idaho tribe’s language programs is currently available on the Apple or Android application stores. There are no overarching future goals or policies for how these technologies should be created and utilized by the tribe.