I am building on the foundation of Native values, bringing self-sufficiency and environmental stewardship together to restore hope and pride to tribes throughout the United States. With my company, Lakota Solar Enterprises, I am working to create a complete systemic change to energy use on reservations.

Returning to the old ways of honoring Mother Earth brings hope to Native Americans. When we have hope, we regain the ability to think ahead to tomorrow and to building a better future. We will finally be able to see uplifting possibilities for our children and grandchildren.

Problem

Reservations often represent “forgotten nations” within the United States. In many cases the economic, cultural, spiritual, and social differences on-versus-off reservation are even more pronounced than they may be between separate countries. Lakota Solar Enterprises is based out of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Conditions are hard for the approximately 30,000 people who live there: more than half live below the federal poverty line and the unemployment rate is over 80%. Although they live within the wealthiest nation on earth, men on the Pine Ridge Reservation have the lowest life expectancy (48 years) in the Western Hemisphere, except for Haiti. There is little economic infrastructure (e.g. there is not a single bank on the Reservation), leading to many of the interconnected symptoms of poverty and hopelessness. Over the past several years, LSE has provided more than 30 workshops for 14 Great Plains tribes and several Lakota colleges. To date, LSE has trained 58 members of five different tribes in solar heating (Oglala Sioux Tribe, Rosebud Sioux Tribe, Spirit Lake Tribe, Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, White Earth Band of Ojibwa) and built more than 800 solar heaters. In 2010, we taught the first workshop on small wind turbines at RCREC. LSE is now developing curricula for training sessions on solar electric systems and weatherization methods.

Solution

To my knowledge, Lakota Solar Enterprises is the first Native owned and operated renewable energy company in the United States. We offer two unique approaches to cultivating renewable energy systems and supporters throughout reservations. First we are Natives teaching Natives. As such, our program becomes more inviting to tribal members, as it inspires a sense of pride and self-reliance that is important to our people. By disseminating information Native to Native we are able to relate RE and EE in a spiritual and cultural context that creates more “buy-in” among the Lakota. In our traditions, it is important for everything we do to carry a meaning that goes beyond emissions savings. Secondly, we focus on family-scale projects, with each system yielding a direct, tangible benefit to individuals who need it most. Currently, many tribal energy programs are built around large-scale projects, such as commercial wind farms. Although these projects can bring economic and environmental benefits to tribes, they often lose community support because individuals do not understand how renewable energy will benefit them individually. People may believe that large-scale plans will not be completed or will not benefit individual families, or that tribes will not retain ownership and control of large commercial projects. By helping one family at a time, LSE brings the case for renewable energy inside individual homes and builds community knowledge and support.

Example

A New Way to Honor the Old Ways: Renewable Energy on Tribal Lands is comprised of three interrelated parts. 1. Training and Demonstration: Help tribes throughout the Great Plains identify and select tribal members for energy efficiency (EE) and renewable energy (RE) training and develop career path Green Teams on these reservations. These Green Teams will assume leadership roles among their tribes, advocating for EE and RE, similar to the role I play among the Oglala Lakota. Lakota Solar Enterprises will provide EE and RE training on-site at RCREC. Establishing sustainable livelihoods, beyond providing green jobs skills, is the next major goal for LSE and TWP in developing our programs. We are currently working with the Native American Development Corporation (NADC) on a partnership to accomplish this goal. The NADC brings expertise in business development on reservations, which requires a different knowledge set than it would outside a reservation setting. TWP will also work with tribes to help them integrate energy efficiency and renewable energy concepts and applications into their tribal agencies and policies wherever appropriate. 2. Market Development: Develop the Green Teams from loosely-organized groups of trainees into independent energy efficiency and renewable energy businesses that provide goods and services on and off reservation. 3. Concerted Replication: LSE and partner Trees, Water & People will share project activities, outputs, outcomes, best practices, and lessons learned with the greater national Native American community. By emphasizing the cost savings and warmer homes created through EE and RE, we will inspire many of the other 335 tribes in the lower 48 states to fund their own trainings on their own reservations and to begin having individuals trained to create additional Green Teams.