"Around the world indigenous peoples are suffering enormous hardship from climate change, but in the western United States, some Native American tribes are seeing climate change as an opportunity for economic self-sufficiency. Consider the Rosebud Sioux Tribe Reservation in south-central South Dakota, where in 2003 the tribe erected the first Native American owned and operated commercial-utility-scale 750-kilowatt wind turbine project on reservation lands. Producing 2.4 million kilowatt hours per year of renewable, clean electricity (enough to power 240 typical American households), the Rosebud turbine is also connected to the national power grid, offering the tribe the opportunity to sell green power to the federal government at the Ellsworth Air Force Base, and any remaining surplus energy to utility companies.

The Rosebud Sioux Tribe, a founding member of Intertribal COUP, now plans to install a new 30-megawatt wind plant this year on their reservation, which has an abundance of class 5 and 6 winds (wind power is assigned a class ranging from 1 to 6, with 6 being the windiest). Neighboring Sioux tribes on the Pine Ridge, Yankton and the Flandreau Santee Sioux Reservations are also looking to wind development to provide clean electricity and local employment.

The ultimate goal for renewable energy projects on reservations is "to provide tribes with the opportunity to build sustainable homeland economies based upon renewable energy generation with the sale of clean energy into both federal and private markets," says Bob Gough, secretary of the Intertribal COUP. "Fossil-fuel extraction costs are heavily subsidized by the taxpayers," says Gough, explaining the importance of wind energy, "and the price of pollution, legislated caps on insurance liability, unproven long-term nuclear-waste storage proposals, and impacts on public health and environmental quality are put on society's collective tab." In addition, federally funded hydroelectric dams built in the mid-20th century rely on rivers that are now running dry. The Western Area Power Administration markets and transmits electricity from federal hydroelectric power plants throughout the United States. It has been coping with a drought-induced 50-percent decrease in hydroelectric power by increasing coal-fired electricity production.

"For our own survival," Gough says, "we need to begin to think about windsheds, not just watersheds. There are abundant untapped resources on American Indian reservations across the Great Plains that can benefit not only the American Indian people but also everyone living downwind along the Great Lakes to New England. Looking just at the northern Great Plains, there is a potential contribution for the equivalent of about one-half the total installed electric capacity for the entire United States. Reservation-based renewable energy is a no-regrets strategy for tribal energy self-sufficiency and for addressing global warming.""

Get the Story:
Tribal Winds Blowing Strong (Cultural Survival Quarterly August 2008)