Speaker encourages pursuit of culturally-sound energy solutions

Julie Severn

2/2/2005 12:00:00 AM

Indian Country should take the lead initiative in developing renewable energy sources such as wind urged a nationally-known indigenous environmental activist.

Winona LaDuke, Honor The Earth program director, delivered this message as the keynote speaker during the Wind Energy Development on Tribal Lands conference Jan. 20 at the Soaring Eagle Casino & Resort. Honor the Earth is a grassroots organization based in Minneapolis to �increase funding and public support for Native communities, protecting the earth we all share.' The event was sponsored by the U.S. Dept. of Energy and the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan.

"We've become a junkie as a country," LaDuke alleged. "This is the context of where we are today. The U.S. is the largest energy market in the world and the U.S. is hands down the largest glutton of energy consumption."

LaDuke has been instrumental in educating Native communities throughout Indian Country and the rest of the nation on alternative energy sources. This has included erecting a wind turbine on her home reservation, the White Earth Reservation, as well as Red Lake, Leech Lake and Fond Du Lac reservations in Minnesota.

"As Native people we were not prepared for the issue of wind energy," LaDuke explained. "We're not the smartest or richest Indians, but we're the ones who live here. We decided to take responsibility for our future, to make a difference.

"The first step in creating clean energy for generations to come is to own up to the fact that we're junkies and deal with that level."

According to LaDuke, one of the largest transformations that has occurred in energy is that cultures have moved from being labor based energy systems to capital and fossil-fuel based.

"That has had a very significant effect on Indian Country," she said. "When we first came to this land, we didn't need oil. So all those indigenous people were relocated from the eastern seas. Ninety seven Nations were moved to a place called Oklahoma Indian territory. That was supposed to be the first Indian reservation and what did they find there? Oil. That was the next wave of technological advancement."

LaDuke said the foundation of all major oil corporations today-including Standard, Exxon, Mobil and Kerr-McGee-came from Indian territory.

"We have a long history with the energy industry," she continued. "Those companies expanded all around North America and the world. Given these issues that our ancestors saw first hand, we have a lot of experience in grappling with a solution.

"It's all about how a community adapts. What is the relevance of our teachings as to where we are today? To reflect on that what the Creator has given us. There is always a relevance and significance in our teachings."

Referring to the Seven Teachings, LaDuke said the prophecies were aware of �how we were going to batch things up.'

"No society has a monopoly on botching things up. The question is if you have the humility to fix it-if you are able to say, �We have made some mistakes Creator. We are humans, we are not perfect. We are flawed and pitiful in our own way.'

"We need to always keep our teachings. They taught us that through time, things would change. People would come-some would have a good heart and some would not. We all know there were some bad people. It's important not to be historical revisionists and pretend that it did not happen. We have a really good museum here-the Ziibiwing Cultural Center-that reminds us of who we are. I say that because of where we are today, you have to put in context as to what we've been through."

LaDuke's history lesson continued as she discussed how the U.S. moved into the new age of coal and nuclear energy.

"With the rise of OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) in the 1970s and third world nationalism-basically countries said you can not steal from us anymore, which is what America and the British were doing," she stated. "A lot of those corporations came back to Indian Country. You saw the rise of oil and coal develop and nuclear power in Indian Country."

Spending most of her life exploring renewable energy sources as a viable option, LaDuke worked with the Navajo Nation in the late 70s and early 80s.

"They had 44 operating uranium mines, 10 uranium mills, five coal fire power plants and four coal strip mines-all on or adjacent to the Navajo Nation," she explained. "In just one year, the Navajo Nation exported enough energy resources to fuel the needs of New Mexico for 32 years. The lights of Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, and Phoenix are all powered by Navajo coal or uranium. In that same year, 85 percent of all Navajo households had no electricity."

LaDuke maintained that someone will always bear the environmental impact of coal-stripped mines and contaminated water due to radiation.

"In this case it was the Navajo people," she said. Many of the men who worked in the mines are now dead. They worked without ventilation and drank coal contaminated water from the bottom of the mines. There birth defect rate was 17 times the national average. Navajo women who washed their husbands clothes died of skin cancer. That is the history."

There are currently 1,000 abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Reservation, according to LaDuke.

"The people are still trying to get compensation and still trying to get cleanup," she said.

The Green Party vice presidential candidate in 1996 and 2000 claimed Indian Nations have four of the 10 largest strip mines in the world on their reservations.

"I'm going to suggest that democracy has become somewhat compromised to energy corporations," she continued. "The Exxon oil spill of 1989 is still not cleaned up. Proposals and counter proposals are continually made. Exxon was supposed to pay $5 billion for the cleanup. They proposed paying between $25 and $28 million, which was $17 million less that their CEO made in a year. How does justice work?

"When you're a junkie, you end up in places you probably aren't supposed to be. We just had a young Ogitchedaw killed overseas this week. The choices we make as a community are critical."

LaDuke spoke about the time of the Seventh Fire and said now is the time to take responsibility by making the right decisions.

"We are the people who have come to know what our history is," she said. "We have this opportunity. The prophecies spoke of two paths. One of those paths is well worn, but it is scorched. The other is not well worn, but it is green. It is our choice upon which to embark. That is exactly where we are with all our experiences. It is the time of the Seventh Fire. It is upon us to make these decisions in a certain way."

Tribal communities are land based cultures or people who reaffirm their relationship to creation by ceremony, prayer, feasting, and by honoring relatives, she explained.

"Over time, we have had some separations from that. We have all our relatives, but sometimes the process of colonialism makes us look a little differently upon them.

"When we make our decisions as a community, what does it mean when we make our decisions based on economic development as a Tribe? Where are we going? How do we reaffirm those relationships? We are the people who are standing up for our brothers, for the wolf, for our language and teachings."

LaDuke also said cultural framework is the basis for which the right path should be chosen.

"This is not just about money, big projects, or how many kilowatts we can produce," she said. "This is about who we are. It's about our land, water and our relatives, and it has to be about that. It has to be about that.

"We live in a society that has had a lot of changes around us. Some have been good and some have been kind of tough on this land. That is a reality. We could pretend that is not and we could pretend that it has been a fantastic process of colonialism, but that would be wrong."

The overlap in cultural diversity and bio-diversity exists not just in Indian communities, but on a worldwide scale and LaDuke said she felt that there is a struggle to hold on to the tiny pieces of bio-diversity.

"Anything that can be dammed has pretty much been dammed, and anything that could be mined has pretty much been mined. Any tree that can be cut has pretty much been cut. The leftovers-that's what we've got," she said. "So, what should we do as a Tribal community? And what is the relationship between our choices in consumption and our values?"

Environmental destruction is polluting the culture by way of coal contamination ending up in the lakes and streams, according to LaDuke.

"We cannot eat the fish. The Creator did not tell us to go to the store and buy meat. He told us to fish," she said. "The coal and CO2 contamination over the past 200 years have had a major impact on global climate change. Warming gasses in the atmosphere have grown by almost one-third to a level that hasn't occurred in the past 20 million years."

LaDuke said on a national level Indian reservations are located on some of the windiest land which would allow the production of power locally to decentralize power production. Some 23 Indian Reservations in the Great Plains regions have as much as 200 gigawatts of wind power potential-enough potential generating capacity to reduce output from coal plants by 30 percent and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electricity production by 25 percent. LaDuke said that is enough wind energy to produce half of the present U.S. installed electrical capacity.

"We need to consume less and buy with a conscience, as well as look into alternative energy sources," LaDuke urged. "The key in dealing with this addiction is to cut consumption and be energy efficient, while producing a source of power."

The activist is currently working on the Pine Ridge Reservation and claims they have 45,000 more times the wind power than they could ever use. She said the Fort Berthold reservation has over 17,000 times as much wind power potential as could be used.

"I think that's the mark of an export economy," she said. "It costs a lot to put wind power up, but the market is not set up for our future. We can be victims or be people of self-determination. We could have the same resources as today for years to come by eliminating contamination. Working together, we can be proactive about our destiny.

"We have a choice between those two paths," LaDuke concluded. "We can either create long-term environmentally and culturally sound jobs and economic stability in Indian Country or we can continue to line the pockets of utilities and energy companies while we combust ourselves to oblivion. Let's make the right choice together."

By Winona LaDuke

(Editor's note: The following information is from the Honor the Earth publication where LaDuke is the Anishinaabe Program Director. She is also the founding director of the White Earth Land Recovery Project and program director of the Honor the Earth Fund.)

Using a wind-measuring device called an anemometer, Native communities complete an assessment of wind potential. The reading gives some sense as to the appropriate type of turbine and viability of the project.

The community then decides what size and how many turbines to put up and how to arrange financing. Unlike some farmers in Minnesota and Iowa who now lease out wind rights to major corporations for about $2,500 per turbine per year, the Tribes would own their wind facilities outright.

The average construction cost is $1,000 per kilowatt, so a 750-kilowatt turbine-enough to power about 250 homes-might cost $750,000.

The most expensive part of the venture, and the area where most communities need the most assistance, is building the turbines.

However, the price of wind energy has dropped precipitously in the past 25 years due to increased technological efficiency.

Wind is now cheaper than coal from a new plant, although not as cheap as coal from older, more polluting facilities.

The supply of wind is also stable, largely impervious to the supply fluctuations and regional politics that plague the fossil fuel market.

The biggest boost for wind power, though, would come from a shift in government policy. The Apollo Project, an alliance of environmental groups and 12 labor unions, has called for an investment of $300 billion of federal money into renewable energy.

According to Apollo, that investment would stimulate an estimated $1.4 trillion in new gross domestic product and add 3.3 million new jobs.

The Tribal wind program also provides an opportunity for Native communities from the east and west coasts-including wealthy casino-operating Tribes-to invest in some of the largest landholding, wind-rich Tribes on the plains. This type of cross-Tribal investment would help to restore the centuries-old trade relations that existed between indigenous nations.

There is abundant opportunity, but making the Great Plains into the Saudi Arabia of wind energy will not be simple or easy.

In the future we will not be cheated, nor stolen from.