MIAMI, Okla. — High-speed digital Internet access will become available to more than 50 Indian tribes in 14 states this year through the efforts of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and its Rocket Bingo gaming subsidiary.

“I don’t think of us as a gaming tribe like they classify a lot of tribal gambling,” said Floyd Leonard, chief of the Miami Tribe.

“My main priority has always been education and cultural preservation,” said Leonard.

“The gaming just gives us the means to accomplish that more quickly. There’s a lot that can be accomplished by Indian people in remote locations using the Internet, if they have convenient, affordable access to it.”

According to statistics compiled by the U.S. Department of Commerce, 26.2 percent of homes nationwide have Internet access; 22.2 percent of rural homes have the link, with Oklahoma’s statewide average 20.4.

In American Indian households nationwide, 18.9 percent have Internet, but in rural areas only 12.8 percent have access.

Those numbers could change with Tuesday’s 11 a.m. groundbreaking for a $750,000 expansion at the Miami Tribe’s business and gaming complex at 3410 P St. N.W. in Miami. The Miami Tribe Business Development Authority obtained a grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for the project to expand both its building and the range of services it offers gaming customers.

About three years ago, the Miami Tribe purchased the Rocket Bingo gaming company, started in Oklahoma by private entrepreneurs Nelson C. Johnson and Ron Harris. The company manufactured electronic bingo gaming machines, placed them in tribal gaming halls, and maintained a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week service center. The company assembled machines for the games at its headquarters in Miami, shipping them to gaming locations nationwide.

With the company’s base in Oklahoma, the Miami Tribe expanded its scope to machines on Indian land in Washington, Missouri, California, Arizona, Wisconsin and New York. Using satellite uplinks to provide the gaming tech support even at remote locations, the tribal company also began offering Internet access to the tribal business employees at the sites where the machines were located.

The expansion will triple the local headquarters and machine assembly complex from 7,200 square feet to more than 21,000 square feet, and expand its tech-support center fiber-optic cable and satellite uplink capacity to include non-gaming channels and links to tribal complexes in 14 states.

“This will give each tribe’s members access to distance learning facilities, and we’re working with the Oklahoma Board of Regents for Higher Education to get them credited college courses, as well as high school GED classes,” Leonard said.

Johnson, who is chairman and CEO of the tribal development authority, and Ron Harris, head of the subsidiary Rocket Bingo operation, say the gaming expansion will provide a way to take all types of Internet services to remote tribal members and businesses.

“A lot of tribal elders don’t want the younger people getting into education or the Internet because it takes them away from the reservation and depletes the tribe,” Harris said.

“There is a new trend starting to develop, in which the younger Indians are getting the college educations and white world’s technical capabilities and bringing them home to the reservation.”

Because of the expansion, the Miami Tribe is now talking with new tribal customers in New Mexico, Montana, Florida, Alabama, Minnesota and South Dakota.