As solar power grows and grows everywhere, it is growing on tribal lands and communities throughout North America (and, I assume everywhere). The sun shines for everyone, and solar power is now within the reach of many people.
Many Native Americans are happy to generate electricity from clean, natural sources. Reduce our “Carbon Moccasins” with our “Solar Moccasins”, some say. As tribes seen to expand and reclaim their lands, and to restore the natural landscape, solar and other renewable energy are attractive technologies.
Almost as important, solar technology can generate power locally, and it can be locally owned. Many tribal communities are excited by the possibility of “energy sovereignty” [1]. It’s not just a good thing, it’s a good thing we can choose to do for ourselves.
The “sovereignty” of locally owned solar energy projects is attractive for anyone, but is particularly salient for Native Americans and tribal communities which have a long, long history of expropriation, exclusion, and exploitation on many fronts, including energy.
This fall Jeff St. John reports on a growing number of native owned renewable energy projects and developers across the US (and elsewhere) [1]. Solar technology is now in the hands of the people, including native people.
These developments include off grid energy for isolated settlement, building and campus roof top, community solar farms, and commercial solar farms exporting power to the grid. In short, solar energy is useful in many ways for everyone, and tribes are doing it all. And, by the way, doing it themselves, with local businesses and workers.
While locally owned clean energy is particularly attracive for cultural reasons, tribal communities have some advantages developing these resources. Tribes own land, much of it potentially very suitable for wind or solar power generation. Tribes also have local decision making power and traditions of caring for both nature and humans. This means that tribes can create their own utilites and other organizations to boot up and operate these projects. Motive and means.
As St. John reports, there are also efforts to cooperate and share across tribes and communities. Solutions can be replicated, and costs shared. And, of course, tribe to tribe agreements maintain sovereignty.
Of course, nothing is ever free or easy. Development costs money, and there are enough good ideas to consume a lot of money. And it is critically important where the money comes from and what strings are attached.
More important, it is important to deploy renewables in responsible ways. Sprawling solar developments that wreck nature and threaten food supplies are not what we want. Tribal communities have a long history of extractive industries that take the profits, leave the mess, and destroy sacred and beloved lands. Renewable developments will need to dread carefully and lightly.
Overall, I expect that tribes and tribal communities will be a particularly interesting sector developing reneable energy resources. There is a strong confluence of culture, politics, economics and technology, all of which point to local, locally owned clean energy production. “Solar Moccasins”.
- Jeff St. John, With renewables, Native communities chart a path to energy sovereignty, in Canary Media, October 10, 2022. https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-equity/power-by-the-people-native-energy-sovereignty
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