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JUNE 8, 2000

Even if you've only been on the Internet for a short while, you've probably visited a chat room or participated in some type of online discussion. We decided to take a look at some of the places where you can find interesting conversation.

USENET
USENET is one of the oldest forms of communication online. According to a recent report, its also falling out of use. But at least one newsgroups, alt.native, continues to receive a lot of traffic. Mostly inhabited by the professional set, alt.native has a set of regulars who will chat about anything and everything from fry bread recipes to mascots.

On hot topics such as the recent threads on the Makah whale hunt, you'll see the divisions between the Native and non-Native posters most clearly. But most of the time, the discussion between users is interesting, engaging, and educational.

AOL
America Online boasts the largest subscriber base of any online service so you can be sure there are plenty of Indian users and users interested in Indians. Even in the wee hours of the morning, you can find them chatting in the Native American Chat rooms.

As with alt.native, there's a group of regulars who attend the rooms. True to AOL's reputation as the place to meet potential online romances, the most frequent topic is men and women and where to find them. But you'll also find talk about powwows, racism, and just general chit-chat. Occasionally, you'll get the curious visitor who always asks "Are you guys Indians?" as if he or she is surprised to see that Native Americans are online.

DISCUSSION GROUPS / MESSAGE BOARDS
Web-based discussion groups are fast replacing USENET as the venue of choice for online users. The technology is so pervasive that anyone can create their own personalized group in a matter of minutes, thanks to services like eGroups, Yahoo!, and Delphi. Most also feature mailing list capabilities and are poised to take over that form of discussion as well.

So you can literally find hundreds of groups about Indian issues. On eGroups alone, we counted more than 50 with topics ranging from Indian law to Indian singles. Some have as little as 5 members, others have hundreds, so you can always find the group that suits your pace. eGroups plays host to some of the most popular groups as well, including NativeCelebs, where can learn about your favorite actors and actresses.

You can also find several web-based discussion boards on various web sites, including Navajos.Com and of course, Indianz.Com. But you can also make up your own message boards using a variety of tools such as BeSeen.

CHAT ROOMS
Except for AOL, there aren't many chat rooms you can find these days. In the past, the place to be was WBS Native American Chat, mostly inhabited by a dedicated set of college students all throughout Indian Country. Unfortunately, this highly entertaining chat was phased out. While Navajos.Com hosts a chat, recent visits only showed at most a half dozen chatters at any one time. Perhaps the Internet is waiting for a cool new place for Indians to chat...Any suggestions?

Relevant Links:
USENET: alt.native
If you don't have access to newsgroups, you can read alt.native on the web at Deja.Com or Remarq.
eGroups: www.egroups.com
For more info on the NativeCelebs group, visit NativeCelebs.
BeSeen: www.beseen.com/board
Navajos.Com: www.navajos.com/commcenter
Indianz.Com: www.indianz.com/TalkingCircle/MessageBoard