The Internet

Posted Up: April 21st 2004

I came upon this internet stuff back in '96 I think? Maybe earlier, because I remember it just starting to come around the rez in my late high school years. It was the inevitable "chatting" that got me hooked early on. I was talking to folks, and even putting up some poems for hours @ a time. It was when you had to refresh a page in order to see the latest posts instead of them automatically scroll on screen. Anyways, that was the first experience I had w/ this whole internet thing.

Afterwords, I came upon some "native" chat rooms on go.com's stuff. Not only that, but for signing up, you could also build up your own homepage w/ the same name. Kinda like pre-yahoo I guess. So, it was there that I started to get the earliest experiences of building anything online. I built those first webpages to focus on some writtens I did around those times. They were pretty damn good too, but in the craziness of it all, I didn't back anything up, and they are now lost. But, from those websites coming along, and then dying down, I got to concentrate on what I wanted to do; build 'real' native websites.

That was an exciting time for me then. I built a website that was a collection of quality native sites, including one of the first native model sites. I built a site for native athletes too, and got to interview, or at least bring light to native athletes all over. This native athlete site eventually inspired a couple of people to create what is now known as NdnSports.com. After I learned that, I was extremely humbled by the shock. Then, I had other small things here and there that didn't do much. I tried working on rez'd out web creations (rowc), and again, something short lived. The other site that had serious attention was a native gang site. I really had hopes and dreams for this site, but things winded down a lot. After awhile, native hip hop became something I was more interested in than the other things I set up.

Native hip hop dot net, the first and finest of its kind in its hayday. Now there are other sites out there, and even 'mags' that claim to be the face, or only voice of native hip hop. In all honesty, the first and only 'true' voice of native hip hop will forever be from the efforts of Mr. Brian Frejo and his Culture Shock event. DJ Abel started to come into his own around then, and the native b-boys/b-girls started to make a move then. Taggers were welcomed to do their thing there. A battle for mic supremecy was held. If anyone is to be father of the term, "native hip hop" my vote would go to Brian.

Sorry, got off track. It was in these years that things started to begin to roll. Navajoland.com would eventually lead into Red Nations, and a small geocities' site would eventually turn into nativehiphop.net. Native chatters went from go.com network over to yahoo, and from there some would venture into msn.com's chat rooms. Native graphic design was first noticed by me from the likes of 21native.com and firewaterr.com and bring about the likes of eniphul.com. Native calendars were one of the first ways to promote native models, and then models broke away from that into being recognized all on their own in sites like Red Nations and nativephotographer.com. Clothing designers like rezdog.com and purenative.com would lead into redhandapparel.com and nativethreads.com. The early beginnings of War Party and red vinyl's sites would indirectly bring light to Tribal Live (where are you guys?) and Night shield. Online references like http://www.hanksville.org/NAresources/ would lead to nativesweb.com and waboos.com.

Things usually have a start, and I've been fortunate enough to say that it's because of nativehiphop.net that nativegame.net would come around, and even this mafia-magazine.com site would pop up and claim to be the only voice of native hip hop. The earliest visitors know that this site had a disagreement w/ red vinyl early on, but now things are on another level. New visitors know that this site may not be up @ 100%, or even know what this site was like @ 100%, but know the news here is, if nothing else, credible because it ALWAYS comes from the artists themselves.

Natives have been coming into their own for a long time, and now the information superhighway is no different. If I have my way, I'll be around to keep ya'll informed of what's going on, both inside, and outside the native hip hop realm.


Posted on 04 Jun 2006 by Windreamer