About this demonstration
A working example of what a Tribal Nation's website can be, built by Wiyaka Studios using a Nation that does not exist.
Nothing here is real
There is no such Nation. There is no Cottonwood Bend, no Chairwoman Whitfield, no clinic at 4 Council Loop Road. Every council member, staff member, program, phone number, news item, job posting and document on this site was invented to demonstrate a website, and every phone number uses the 555 range that is reserved for fiction.
We built it this way on purpose. A demonstration site should never borrow a real Nation's name, seal, photographs, history or cultural property to sell our own work.
Why the Nation has no name
The site is called simply Tribal Nation. That is not a placeholder we forgot to fill in. It is the point. When a council looks at this site, the name slot is empty so they can see their own Nation's name in it, rather than reading somebody else's.
Why there is no Indigenous language on this site
Above the site name, above the homepage greeting, and above every section heading on this site there is a short underlined line with nothing in it. That line is reserved, at the same size and weight as the English beside it, and it is empty on purpose.
We do not invent Indigenous words, we do not run English through a translator, and we do not borrow one Nation's language to decorate another Nation's website. A language belongs to its speakers. We would rather show a Nation an honest empty space than fill it with something we made up.
The space is real, designed and measured before any word exists, so when your speakers give us the words they land in a layout that was built around them. See where every reserved line sits.
Where the pictures come from
There are two photographs on this site: the prairie behind the homepage, and the grassland on the Our Nation page. Both are real, both are in the public domain, and both are open prairie in South Dakota with no people, no landmark and no structures in frame.
They are not this Nation's land, because this Nation has none. They stand in for scenery, nothing more. We also turned down the obvious dramatic choice, Badlands National Park, because its South Unit lies inside the Pine Ridge Reservation, and borrowing a real Nation's country to dress an invented one is exactly the thing this demo refuses to do.
Everything else you see is drawn in code: the seal, the council portraits, the news thumbnails, and the ridge line that runs between sections. A fictional Nation should not be represented by real Native people's faces, and we will not generate faces either. On your site, all of it becomes slots for your own photographs, your land, your powwow, your elders, your seal, and the layout does not change when they drop in.
What this demonstration is meant to prove
Each of these answers a specific failure of the typical Tribal website.
- The five things members actually want
- Enrollment, jobs, Council, forms and health are one tap from the homepage. Nothing a member needs is more than two taps deep.
- A site-wide alert your staff can switch on
- Boil-water advisory, road closure, office closing at noon. Staff toggle it on, type the message, and it appears on every page within two minutes.
- A department directory that works
- Eighteen offices, each with a named person, hours, and a phone number sized to be tapped on a phone, instead of a PDF org chart from 2014.
- Staff edit it, not a vendor
- News, events, jobs, minutes and staff changes are all edited by your own people through a plain form. No invoice, no waiting.
- Documents that are findable
- Sorted by what they are, newest first, each with a plain description, not a wall of filenames.
- Fast on a bad connection
- Every page is plain static HTML with drawn artwork instead of heavy photography. It loads on one bar.
You would own all of it
This is the part that matters most, and it is the part most vendors will not put in writing.
Your content
Your staff edit the site directly. Every change is saved into your own repository with your name on it.
Your code
The entire site lives in a repository we can transfer to your Nation's account whenever you ask. No proprietary platform, no license to renew.
Your domain
Registered in your Nation's name, or transferred into it. You hold it, and it cannot be held over you.
Your hosting
Moves to your own account whenever you want it. The site keeps running the whole time.
We make our living on retainers: updates, training, backups, and being there when something breaks. We do not make it by holding a Nation's website hostage.