Wired tribe.

Six-year-old Ikulari, an indigenous boy from Brazil's Javae tribe in Tocantins state, north of Brasilia, ran away from the first computer he ever saw--twice. Now, however, he is instead glued to the screen, sketching designs typical of his tribe. Such transformations are commonplace after the Bradesco Foundation, part of banking giant Bradesco, opened a Digital Inclusion Center in the town of Canuana, on Bananal Island, 500 kilometers from the state capital of Palmas.

"Digital inclusion is an important matter, and I was very impressed," says Marcio Cypriano, the president of Bradesco. In the home of Chief Panami, in a room with 10 computers, the foundation offers tribe members classes in information and Internet access using wireless networks. Nivaldo Marcusso, the head of the foundation's technology area, says social inclusion has come to mean access to technology. "In the future, people without access will be considered illiterate," he says. Marcusso will install 40 of the centers in underprivileged rural and urban communities by the end of the year.

The centers started up with used computers from Bradesco, but now the foundation is expanding the project with U.S. partners such as Microsoft, Intel, Cisco and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Microsoft, for instance, has invested US$150,000 to buy new computers for 15 centers, according to Marcusso.

The Tocantins experience has been a success, say its patrons. "I'm learning to get around on the computer, but the kids pick it up much faster," says Edilson Haburunatu, an indigenous man living in an 80-family Javae community. Just a few months into the project, they are already talking e-commerce: Users want to build a Javae portal where tribe members could sell traditional handicrafts online.