This article interviews Bruce Buffalo, project team leader for a 2018 funded SIGHT project in Maskwacis, Canada, a place formerly cut-off from the online world. Maskwacis is an impoverished First Nations Canadian community grappling with addiction, unemployment, and suicide. Like many other indigenous reserves, it is a place with little access or connection to the Internet. Bruce Buffalo, a Maskwacis resident and self-taught engineer, founded the Mamawapowin Technology Society (MTS) with the objective of bringing free internet connection to Maskwacis.

“Mamawapowin” – the Cree word for bringing people together – aptly describes MTS’s mission statement: “To bring rural, First Nations people together through connectivity.”