 Our first IP3 award this year is in the category of Internet Protocol, and it goes to the pair of Matthew Rantanen and Jeffrey Blackwell. Matthew Rantanen and Jeffrey Blackwell are being awarded this year's IP3 award for their many years of advocacy and public service on behalf of the often overlooked communities in Native American, Hawaiian, and Alaskan communities. Between these two they have done it all. Matthew is the Director of Technology for the Southern California Tribal Chairman's Association and Director of their Tribal Digital Village Network Initiative, which brings broadband to the key community buildings and institutions on tribal lands in Southern California. He has been with the Southern California Group for the past 19 years and has also worked as part of the National Congress of American Indians Technology Task Force and on the Board of Native Public Media. Jeffrey Blackwell is currently the General Counsel for Emeryn, a 100% tribally owned company dedicated to keeping resources in tribal communities, including digital infrastructure. I first had the pleasure of meeting Jeff a decade ago when he founded the FCC's Office of Native Affairs and Policy, or ONAP, as they call it. This office created a focal point for sovereign tribal nations to be heard on communications policy within the U.S. government, when statistics show tribal lands are the most left behind in the digital divide. Matthew and Jeff, their years of work have blazed a trail that others have followed into tribal communications advocacy, including with us today, our PK's own first policy fellow, Ejail Casparalta, following in their footsteps advocating for tribal communities. In 2020, when a campaign was organized to ensure tribal communities would not miss out on the first claim to the 2.5 gigahertz spectrum ban, due to the impacts of COVID, it was Matthew and Jeff that were instrumental in bringing as many voices to Washington as possible to make the case the tribal communities are in the most need for broadband and need more time to take advantage of this tribal window, this first claim opportunity. We may not have won as large of an extension to the tribal window as we wanted. The public knowledge is proud to work alongside Matthew and Jeff, and our work one bipartisan support in Congress that still keeps this issue alive for the future. So for their trailblazing work on behalf of tribal communities, public knowledge is honored to give our first IP3 award of the night for internet protocol to Matthew Rantanen and Jeffrey Blackwell. Excited that Jeff could be with us today. Matthew could not be with us today. So we're going to start with a video from Matthew accepting his award from a distance and then we'll go to Jeff. Why don't we hit that video. This is Matt Rantanen. I would just like to say thank you for the honor of receiving the IP3 award in conjunction or with my friend Jeffrey Blackwell. It's definitely an honor to receive the award, but it is absolutely twice as good to be sharing it with my friend Jeff Blackwell. We've been working on policy and tribal issues for the better part of two decades together and have been able to move the needle for Indian country and get opportunity and increase value to the tribes and it's just been a real pleasure to work alongside of this gentleman and to be recognized with him. My public knowledge and the folks here is really special. I met Harold Feld from public knowledge about 2002 or 2003 at the first International Community Wireless Summit held in Champaign Urbana, Illinois and it's been a great pleasure to have somebody that's inside the circle at NDC that knows the inner workings of the mechanisms that make all of this happen and has been an honest watchdog for Indian country and supporting the people that we've worked with for years and years and years and to be able to call Harold a friend is very special. So I'm currently working on what happens after you get a 2.5 gigahertz tribal priority window license for spectrum from the Federal Communications Commission, working with several funding agencies and those folks that create opportunity for tribes to be able to understand what it means to own a license, how to better utilize the license itself and then how to develop a plan, a business plan, a network plan, a relationship with other vendors and other carriers to be able to utilize this new license that they've gotten. So that's a really important step that's happening. A lot of tribes applied and understand the value of a license, but now they need to know how to implement that into their community and make better use of this great opportunity is once in our lifetime opportunity. So that's one of the big things I'm working on right now. I also work in long haul dark fiber with Arcadian Infricom and, you know, we have just gotten new legislation passed at the Navajo Nation to streamline the process and the workflow with them to build with the nation as a partner to connect major cities and data centers and connect those in between that are not connected currently. In the future, we hope to address many issues that are still pending at the Federal Communications Commission about spectrum and other opportunities for tribes, and really trying to pave the way, knock down the barriers and just really open the open doors for tribes to be able to function in this space as we are not seeing a lot of support from existing carriers and incumbents to support these communities still. So the tribes have taken it upon themselves to build out and to learn and to manage this asset and the connectivity to broadband as part of their inner governance structure so we're helping do our best to put that together. I'm still working with National Congress of American Indians as the co-chair of the Tech and Telecom subcommittee with Jeffrey Blackwell. And we will be, you know, working through the future of the member tribes there and their needs to help craft policymaking for legislation and things moving forward. Thank you. It's very much an honor. Okay. And thank you, Matt. Yes. And now let's go to Jeff Blackwell. Jeff, you're with us. There he is. Jeff, you're muted, though. I hope you can hear me. Oh, watch the color. Thank you. So she've had Jeffrey Kovrat Blackwell. Say, oh, maha, chikasha, Muskogee Creek and Choctaw. I've just offered everyone a very simple, very simple greeting in the languages of the four tribes from which I am descended. To begin with, I would like to thank and cheers, public knowledge. There's a little bit of Scotch in here that I bought with my very first real paycheck as an attorney when I was living and working. My wife is in graduate school in Boston. I've been aware of the good work of public knowledge ever since they began, which ever since they got started, which was just about a year after I got started to my first go round at the FCC. And then Tannen, I don't know what to say. This is a deep honor. I want to thank public knowledge, especially for pairing us. Matt, it is true Matt has been a friend and colleague for the better part of two years. He's a brother from another mother. And those who know Matt know that he looks like a great big wookie and he is kind of a wookie. But he's also an artist at heart. And he has the most amazing ability to bring people who would otherwise be intimidated by the technology and the acronyms and the complexity of this arena. And I would like to thank the table happily and willfully and in helping tribal leaders and federal policy makers alike really understand that what can first appear complex really isn't in that it's merely in need of deeper thinking, better attention and dedication. I'd also like to thank my beloved wife, Mary Elizabeth Blackwell, the love of my life and without whom I would not have graduated high school, college or law school, much less be able to travel to some of the most remote parts of the nation to distant reservations and Alaska villages and native Hawaiian homelands or be able to drive two hours to work every day in and out of from our home into Washington DC. It's absolutely warm me out watching her raise our children. But seriously without without Beth I would not be the person I am and I can honestly say that she has never let me down. I would like to make an apology. Unfortunately, Beth cannot be here tonight because the demands of her work. She is a biostatistician and epidemiology she still works, even though we now reside in Albuquerque, New Mexico and no longer reside in the bell way. She is an epidemiologist and biostatistician she still works for the corporation that she used to work for in DC, and they are part of one of the two studies to develop a vaccine to combat COVID-19. And it has impacted all of her studies and she is right now working seven days a week, 12 hours a day, along with everybody else and her team to clear the decks to be able to prepare to provide at least one of the two vaccines to everybody here. And I also want to thank our daughters Mary, Megan Elizabeth and Jennifer Michelle. They're always very patient with their dad when I stomp around the kitchen and get on my soapbox about some law or some policy, and Tim Wu got me pretty fired up for there for a little bit so So, I'm very fortunate to have been to come from a long line of tribal leaders and advocates and policymakers in the space between the federal government and tribal nations. In my family, we are warriors and educators, diplomats and teachers, and I'm only here because of the work and the great efforts of the generations of my family. I want to wreck. I would like folks to know that I am the son of Charles William Blackwell of the Chickasaw Nation who was also chalk talk. He's no longer with us, but he was the ambassador to the United States of the Chickasaw Nation. I'm also the son of Montess Sharon Blackwell. Thank you. Who's a member of the Omaha tribe and also descended from Muscogee Creek Nation. I will tell you it did not impress my mother at all. When I became the first American Indian enrolled member of a tribe to ever work at the Federal Communications Commission, because she was the first American Indian woman to ever work for the Department of Education as an attorney and not a file clerk. And she ended her career as the top career official in the entire federal government in Indian Affairs that she was the head of the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs. I also want to recognize that I was formed and and made into this advocate by my second father William Kenneth thank you. I'm not a member of the Kiowa tribe, but it was also Quapaw and Osage, who is also no longer with us, but seemed to know me innately because he grew up in Oklahoma Indian Country, but was educated in the east, and was a lifelong social services director at the Muscogee Creek Nation. I also want to thank the first person of the first American Indian person on whose behalf I ever advocated my oldest playmate, the oldest friend of my generation, my own brother Jonathan McGillbury Blackwell. I have to tell you whether it was explaining that we had not broken the bicycle that the bicycle wheel had actually been faulty that we had not scratched the record it had actually come scratched, or if it was explaining the, the complex financial structure of a plan to endure to take out a hostile takeover of our own of our own chores bank account to acquire a German shepherd puppy and constructed new fence to enclose it in the same fiscal year. He is my oldest friend, and my oldest trusted buddy. I think that we ended up being able to also finish growing up in Washington DC. My brother worked on Capitol Hill, and has always watched my back in fact one time when I was testifying was a little worried that there might be some angry people in the crowd or in the hallway. And I asked him to come and sit just five rows behind me. And when you come from a family like this, you are instilled with confidence and expectation. One doesn't get involved in the advocacy on behalf of American Indians for accolade. It, it, this is a great surprise. But it is a great honor, and it's one that I accept richly. So, thank you very much. There are a couple things I'd like to say in the time that I have remaining. I have tried many things over the last 20 years to close the digital vibe there are many people actually in the room here who who I need to think as well because whether it was a boss or an elected official or appointed official or a colleague or a classmate. They were always very patient and helpful when I come knocking on the door, asking them to explain what does this part 54 mean or when I occasionally pestered them with questions or had pushy ideas about policies or new programs. There are things that have been tried. There are things that have succeeded where we have not succeeded in the policy proposals. And then the new programs, we've only created a more recalcitrant strain of the digital divide in Indian country. And there are great ironies out there. One sees them in the 2.5 gigahertz world. We need more spectrum, because where 2.5 gigahertz was already licensed. Closer to made of metropolitan areas and therefore it wasn't available available for tribal nations. It also happens to be where there was middle mile fiber available to make that 2.5 gigahertz much more relevant. So there are things to do, but there are also also ways to do things well. And I believe that we need to reinstall the policy making into politics and work together. We need to rebuild the federal trust relationship. And that the tribes share with the federal communications commission and re infuse those efforts to deploy more technology in Indian country. And we hope that industry will be a willing partner in doing that as well. I'd like to say a final thank you to a few institutions that have helped. I think form my abilities as an IP three awardee. I have a great deal, a great number of friends and colleagues at the FCC I feel a great deal of of of allegiance in pride in my time there. And I feel as though there are times where I can cast a vote because I own some stock in that corporation. And I know that there are many of you out there that that share the same idea. I'd also like to acknowledge the National Congress of American Indians, native public media, the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, the American Indian Policy Institute of Arizona State University and ACMA business enterprises the leaders of these organizations have been kind and generous and asking me for help and leadership and in turn teaching me so much and enriching my life in turn. I would also like to say thank Chickasaw Nation Industries and Amron risk for the times that I have been away from my work in federal government and been embedded working in Indian country. They've empowered the opportunity to advocate on behalf of Indians and be involved in this space in an advocating on a volunteer role. So thank you very much to, to public knowledge. I'll actually have a little bit of the scotch now. Madel, thank you. All right. That's beautiful Jeff thank you for sharing such beautiful family story as well. We really appreciate it and congratulations.