(Makah Nation, No Date)

Makah.com is the official website of the Makah tribe, who are natively located in the town of Neah Bay on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. The Makah are considered a sovereign nation residing in their native geographical homeland. Makah tribal members engage in life on and off the reservation as well as “throughout the world practicing an intertwined contemporary and native culture” (Makah Nation, No Date). The Makah’s close physical proximity to the Pacific Ocean displays a lasting influence on their culture and society. Whaling, sealing, and fishing remain important tribal community activities, in regards to cultural identity and history as well as financial income. The above graphic is the header image found on every webpage of the Makah website. The symbolic image of Pacific Northwestern American Indian artwork merged with a photograph of a Makah whaling boat represent common references to Makah local and cultural identity and subsequently are pervasive throughout the website. The superimposition of the tribal specific name on top of this montage draws a distinct connection between these symbolic and iconic images as tools to represent the Makah community within the context of this website.

(Makah Nation, No Date)

The above graphic is displayed on the Makah.com index homepage. The central image is of the physical sign that welcomes citizens to the Makah’s home town. The structural choice to place this welcome sign within the context of the Makah homepage immediately links a familiar geographical border picture associated with offline culture within the tribal group’s virtual home, while the background artwork touches upon themes common to Pacific Northwestern tribal art. The image below is a map of the Makah reservation land appearing on the “Maps” webpage. Compared to the image above, the Makah reservation map is a distinctly different, but equally important method to assert socio-physical boundaries and reference locality. The Eagle-Whale illustration appears in conjunction with both of these references to physicality, symbolically linking products of Makah cultural identity to the physical land where they originally manifested. This cultural emblem appears on other references to physicality as well as on the Makah website itself, signifying a symbolic claim of tribal ownership and representation in both physical and virtual dimensions. The appearance of iconic physical boundary representations as well as cultural symbols, both ordinary to Makah local reality, reflect common techniques used on tribal specific websites to reproduce offline identity and culture as well as to assert a presence online.

(Makah Nation, No Date)

(Makah Nation, No Date)

The Makah website offers a set of different ways to negotiate meanings of identification on the Internet, in specific regards to social boundaries such as local and cultural identities. The boundaries of social meaning are able to let almost any matter of perceived difference between in-group and out-group symbolize their boundaries (Cohen, 1986). Similarly, the Makah tribal website includes a vast range of information on local history and culture, whaling events, natural attractions, tribal businesses, maps, museums, accommodations, and local Makah tribal events. These web pages identify several dimensions of belonging including physical space, geographical region, tribal community, cultural identity, shared history among members, language, and images of community gatherings. The content found on this website, as well as virtually every other tribal specific site I encountered, seem to question the postmodern notion of the Internet as a boundless space where cultural identity and geographical space are meaningless or do not exist.

(Makah Nation, No Date)

The Makah website content appears to be broken down into two distinct halves, outside visitor and inside member. The discourse on outsider-based pages describes components of Makah cultural identity and history, typically accompanied by a photograph of local space. Although this remains a common technique for insider pages as well, the information on these sections represent knowledge Makah inside members are undoubtedly already privy to. For instance, the “Camping” and “Beaches” sections display information and photographs of local areas that are popular destinations for tourists. The image above is found on the “Cape Flattery” web page, which describes the cape as a destination for “eco-tourists” offering “breath taking views” (Makah Nation, No Date). Images and descriptors on these pages reproduce Makah offline physicality, however this outside-visitor-targeted context emphasizes the “exotic” and “spiritual” qualities of the landscapes, in contrast to local familiarity. Understanding the intended audience, the use of specific discourse and images, and the constructed contextual setting each proved to be important factors in determining the intent and scope of web pages I encountered throughout my research.

(Makah Nation, No Date)

The picture above appears on the “Culture” page, drawing upon the Makah’s tradition as a whaling community to describe the tribe’s cultural history. The choice to use a modern photo of Makah whaling canoes to illustrate historical practices creates a link between past communal activities and those of continued today. This image could equally appear within the insider portion of the Makah website, however its placement within the context of the Culture section demonstrates the use of representations closely tied to offline cultural identity as a tool to construct and sell cultural experience to outside visitors. The “Attractions” page contains a wide variety of informational links for tourists including: nature trails, camping locations, bingo, beaches, museums, and fishing opportunities. The textual discourse on this page defines outsiders as its target audience by instructing visitors to: “Click the links to the left and explore all that Neah Bay has to offer you and your family” (Makah Nation, No Date). Inside members are undoubtedly already aware of information on these pages, which clearly target outside visitors.

(Makah Nation, No Date)

The “Makah Days” page displays up to date information about past and upcoming local community events, signifying a change in scope towards inside members. This section moves away from images of historical practices and towards representations of community members taking part in local organizations and events. The above image is the primary photograph featured on the Makah Days community page. This image displays tribal members of various ages interacting within a Makah day event. In offline culture, group events promote social organization and interaction among members, playing key roles in sustaining the community, defining ethnic distinctions, and asserting group identity. The placement of this image within the main insider group page effectively works toward this same goal. Makah.com is comprehensive in its attempt to construct meaning and assert local and cultural identity, which collectively create social boundaries. The link to Makah Days, under the Makah.com header image, is placed in the right corner of the navigation bar, the farthest position away from the outsider-centered culture and attractions links. This structural decision reinforces the division between the distinctly different portions of this website. The Makah Days page uses a photographic representation of a local community-affirming event and structural placement of hyperlinks to unmistakably demarcate the boundary between outside visitors and inside members. Makah.com utilizes native cultural history and local physicality to shape and sell an exoticised cultural experience to outside members, while simultaneously constructing a symbolic community online targeting local tribal members.

The Makah website demonstrates different ways in which social boundaries are asserted on web pages. In this instance, contrasting levels of identification coexist, reproducing a tribal group identity tied to particular situational events, while outside visitors navigate within an exoticized representation of Makah culture and physicality.
This dualistic relationship exemplifies the dynamics of boundary assertion, emphasizing the ‘inside member/outside visitor’ perspective by symbolically asserting difference through reproductions of local community-affirming events in contrast to representations of physicality evoking mystical overtones. The Internet presents a constructed space in which social boundaries are asserted and applied to a wide range of perspectives within specific web pages as well as across numerous websites.

Web pages are rarely—if ever—permanent, but rather dynamic entities displaying change in content and structure over time. The dynamics of text, images, and links reflect the “general dynamics of identity and place as platforms of social meaning” (Christensen, p. 77). The Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw and Makah examples are specific community and identity affirming websites representing socializing offline tribal communities and symbolic online communities. These websites’ common reference to socio-physical boundaries is an important relational dimension to the processes of identity assertion. It appears that in these websites, identity and physicality together play an integral role in asserting social boundaries, creating a sense of belonging, establishing commonalities and reproducing ethnic distinctions.