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Native American Heritage Month 2023 Highlights

Robin Maxkii is a Software Engineer, Activist, and Writer. Maxkii spent her early childhood living on the Stockbridge-Munsee Reservation in Wisconsin. At the age of eleven, she relocated to Houston, where she was introduced to computers. She recalls a section of the Houston Public Library that had computers with a time limit of 30 minutes of browsing time, and after figuring out how to disable the time limit, she became fascinated with the idea that humans could program computers. As a result, she began teaching herself how to code, and she programmed websites using free web hosting services. However, she initially did not pursue college and worked as a production assistant while living in a hostel in Albuquerque. After deciding that she would better suit her community by going to college, she began applying to tribal colleges across the United States, ultimately enrolling in Diné College in Tsaile, Arizona on Navajo Territory. Maxkii was a hardworking student, and as a result she was able to land an internship in Washington, D.C. with the Quality Education for Minorities (QEM) Network. It was at this internship that she shifted her focus to fully pursue coding and advocacy for Native Americans in the technology industry. At this internship, she was tasked with gathering information from the websites of tribal colleges, but instead of manually visiting every page, she coded a solution that gathered the information using Python and Ruby. The QEM President Dr. Shirley McBay, noticed this and recommended that Maxkii pursue a career in technology. After embarking on a journey to raise Native American inclusion in tech, she was able to organize the first AISES Hackathon, which is now held annually at the AISES National Conference, after speaking with the CEO. For their 20th anniversary, Google launched a documentary on their homepage about her unique journey to the tech industry. She was also featured in a documentary put together by Microsoft called “Code_Trip.” Maxkii was invited to the White House on several occasions. She also won the Native American Journalists Association Award in 2018 for her writing. Today, she continues her efforts to reduce the barriers for Native Americans and rural communities to get into tech.

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