This spring in Michigan, the Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Potawatomi, or Gun Lake Tribe, 4 million dollars received of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Tribal climate resilience program, an initiative aimed at helping tribes prepare for climate change. The money will be used to buy a fleet of electric vehicles, help the nation manage a gray water system and install a solar power system that will reduce the tribe’s electricity bills by about 80 percent and make the nation more self-sufficient. Beneath the two-acre solar system will be gardens of native flowers such as butterfly weed, purple prairie clover and primrose to aid in the tribe’s prairie restoration efforts.
“We have to be innovative and find ways to leave less of a carbon footprint,” said Gun Lake Tribal Council member Virginia Vanderband. “If we can generate enough energy for our infrastructure, great.” The tribe has other investments — real estate, a construction company, a grocery store — and while the green energy project is doing well, it’s “not a focus to become part of the energy market,” Vanderband said.
That apparent lack of interest in joining the growing green energy market is the focus of a recent economic study out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, details barriers — such as federal red tape — that tribes face when starting green energy projects. If these prohibitive barriers are not addressed, research tribes across the United States will lose $19 billion in revenue by 2050.
During the early 1800s, tribes were forcibly moved to reservations. Tribes were forced to sign treaties that ceded land to settlers in exchange for land and rights, a process that the United States and his wealth. Many of the reservations to which tribal lands were moved were lands that settlers considered less economically rich, but today much of that land is perfect for solar and wind development.
Altogether, tribal lands represent an area the size of New Mexico, but not all nations have access to land for development, leaving hundreds of tribes out of the green energy market. Of the 574 federally recognized tribes, nearly 250 do not have reservations.
In 2022, about 100 solar farms on reservations generated about 2 percent of all solar power in the U.S., while about 3,000 reserve wind turbines produced about 5 percent of the nation’s wind energy. However, the University of Wisconsin-Madison study found that of 169 utility-sized wind and solar projects on reservation land, only about 5 percent are tribally owned.
In many tribal communities poverty rates remain high – the result of federal policy which has undermined indigenous economies – and according to the study, “the top 25 percent of reservations in terms of renewable endowments are also currently the group with the lowest incomes.” But while these tribal communities have the most to gain in terms of energy independence and new revenue streams, the study found that the lands involved are no more likely to be developed than national parks, forests or wildlife refuges where development is not allowed.
“It’s striking,” said Dominic Parker, the author of the study. “You have reservation areas where there are populations. [Wind and solar] development is not expressly prohibited. And yet you see no more development than these nearby areas where it is expressly prohibited.”
One reason, according to Parker, is the lengthy process of getting permits from tribal and federal entities, a process he calls “white tape,” instead of “red,” to describe the patronizing relationship between federal entities and tribes . Tribes are not legally allowed to fully manage land, waterand other resources that are theirs that can contribute to the growth of their economies. Parker’s research also shows that green energy development companies often go to private land near reservations where “paternalistic” federal regulatory rules do not apply.
“Historically, when resources have been deployed for mainstream public or private economic benefit, the consequences have often been disastrous for indigenous peoples,” the study said. In the 1950s, federal initiatives spurred nuclear power which ultimately poisoned communities such as the Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribe, while pushing for dams as an energy source depleted and flooded tribal lands in the Pacific Northwest.
But much of the green energy conversation, at least for Virginia Vanderband at Gun Lake, keeps tribal sovereignty a priority. Just because energy initiatives are going green doesn’t mean it’s the responsibility of tribes to go along with what the federal government wants.
“We have a social responsibility to the land to keep it clean, to only take what we need,” Vanderband said. “We must first maintain our sovereignty. We have the right to govern ourselves. It enables us to honor and preserve our culture and our way of life.”
