Environment | National

Native Sun News: Building homes with solar energy at Pine Ridge

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Paul Shields (left) and a colleague put sweat equity into the construction of a new energy-efficient home at Oglala made with local materials. Photo by Talli Nauman

Building homes with renewable energy on Pine Ridge Reservation
Red Cloud believes construction will build reservation economy
By Talli Nauman
Native Sun News
Health & Environment Editor

OGLALA –– Paul Shields, son Leonard Peltier and father of three girls, has been building a house here on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation since August, hoping to move from his old FEMA trailer and provide a warm home for his family at the beginning of 2016.

“We should be in by 2016,” Shields told Native Sun News. The Anishinabe-Lakota expects to shave hundreds of dollars off his monthly electric bill by using compressed earthen block with high insulation value for walls, together with cost-effective solar equipment for heating and hot water.

His trailer house in Oglala, provided after the 1999 tornado by the Federal Emergency Management Administration, or FEMA, is “expensive” to heat, at up to $300 a month, because it is all-electric and poorly insulated, he said.

Henry Red Cloud, founder of Lakota Solar Enterprises, says the home-building is about raising awareness and fortifying the local economy on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Photo by Talli Nauman

His mentor in energy-efficient construction, Henry Red Cloud, says Shields’ new home is a project that’s about more than raising a roof for his protégé of nine years. It’s also about raising awareness and fortifying the local economy on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

“Building our own homes with renewable energy, I believe we can build our economy,” says Red Cloud, founder of Lakota Solar Enterprises (LSE) and a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. “We’re building awareness around this.”