Native American Programs

In 2008, SEI 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 Skully 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 focusing on sunlight and life rather than radiation and death.

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 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.