Native American Programs

SEI's Native American program helps Native Americans meet their energy and housing needs with renewable energy and natural building.  SEI works with Native American groups and nonprofit organizations, training people from the Western Shoshone, Skull Valley Goshute, Lakota Sioux, Yurok, Zuni, Hopi, and Chippewa Nations in renewable energy technologies.

Highlights

2011

In October of 2011 SEI staff traveled to northern Minnesota as part of our Native American Outreach Program to work with local electricians to help guide the installation of a 2.2kw grid-tie with battery backup PV system on the home of Winona Laduke. SEI also led a 2-day PV training for local native community members around this installation.

LaDuke is a member of the Mississippi Band Anishinaabeg who lives and works on the White Earth Reservation. She is the Founding Director of the White Earth Land Recovery Project, a non-profit devoted to restoring the land-base and culture of the White Earth Anishinaabeg, and Honor the Earth, a Native-led organization established to address the two primary needs of the Native environmental movement: the need to break the geographic and political isolation of Native communities and the need to increase financial resources for organizing and change. The SEI led installation and training represents another milestone in Laduke’s effort to mobilize her community towards energy and food independence. It also represents the continued success of SEI’s Native American Outreach Program which has provided training and installation support for communities across America. SEI is grateful for the tremendous support we received from the Putnam Foundation, Direct Power & Water, REC Solar, AEE Solar, SMA America, Trojan Battery, Davidson Electric, and all those involved on the ground at White Earth, who helped make this project a success.

2008

In 2008, Solar Energy International teamed up with Honor the Earth, a Native American environmental advocacy group, to successfully conduct a PV installation and training on the Skull Valley Goshute reservation. A year prior, the Skull Valley tribal members celebrated the successful defeat of a proposed nuclear waste storage facility on their reservation. The community feels the PV training, attended by Native Americans from four different tribes, is the beginning of a movement toward a new energy economy.

2005

In coordination with Honor the Earth and the Western Shoshone Defense Project, SEI trained more than 20 Native Americans in PV installation in 2005. The participants installed a PV system to power the ranch home of Mary and Carrie Dann, two Western Shoshone grandmothers. The training was the first step toward the promotion of locally run energy systems and economic development for Native communities.

SEI also worked with Red Feather Development Group and Turtle Mountain Community College in North Dakota in 2005 on the construction of an Environmental Research Center on the tribal college's 100-acre Anishanaube Wellness Center. Tribal college students and staff worked together to design a load-bearing straw bale building with a range of sustainable components.

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