Living in the dark: Native reservations struggle with power shortages in pandemic
Within hours of posting a video to Facebook and Twitter in which she offered to donate iPads to K-12 Native students, Amanda Cheromiah was inundated with increasingly desperate requests.
This was back in March, as schools across the country started closing because of Covid-19. Cheromiah, a PhD student at the University of Arizona, had begun hearing stories of Native students parking outside gas stations to finish their homework or reading for class. It was there they could maybe get better cell reception, or wifi, or enough light when the power was out at home.
Unequal access to utilities – especially electricity – made remote learning nearly impossible on Native lands. Cheromiah, who leads a mentorship program for Native students, said that for many students it was “just not an option”. She mailed about a dozen iPads to students before realizing their need for more resources was too great.
The pandemic has exacerbated already severe energy and economic inequalities in Indian country. For decades, many tribes have suffered from inefficient energy infrastructure, high costs and a lack of funding for new projects. Low electricity rates are compounded by limited cell and broadband service on many reservations. These needs have only gotten worse during the pandemic.
In the face of these challenges, Native people are turning to renewable energy to help their tribes achieve energy and economic independence. If successful, it could also provide growing job opportunities for communities that sorely need them.
Energy infrastructure is essential to living with and containing the virus. Shawnell Damon, who leads contact-tracing efforts for the Navajo area Indian Health Service (IHS), said tracing on the Navajo nation requires “extra work that other contact tracers throughout the US don’t have to do”. For example, after attempting three phone calls, Navajo contact tracers send a community health worker to find that person, an extra step made more frequent by dropped calls and spotty cell service.
Contact tracers at rural testing sites, like the ones found throughout the Navajo nation, are often forced to use paper records until they have a strong enough internet connection to upload the data to the Navajo area IHS database.
Inadequate electric and heating systems are not only insufficient – they’re also more expensive, and the energy bills can quickly stack up in the pandemic. Henry Red Cloud, the Oglala Lakota founder of a solar training center on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, said Native people are desperate for solutions. “They’re quarantined in their homes and using a lot of power and not having the dollars to pay that kilowatt usage.”
Over the past 20 years, Red Cloud’s various companies and initiatives have built thousands of renewable energy set-ups, like solar-powered furnaces and electrical systems that are also more affordable.
But high energy costs aren’t the only problem for Native communities; on the Pine Ridge reservation, Red Cloud estimates there are thousands of people without any running water and electricity – making following hygiene guidelines and stay-athome orders more complicated, if not completely unrealistic.
Red Cloud stresses that these inequalities did not happen by accident. The federal government’s violations of treaties it made with tribes left many without essential resources. Decades of federal government decisions and policies have continued to ignore the rights and needs of tribes, according to Wahleah Johns, the head of the non-profit Native Renewables, which aims to bring off-grid solar power to the Navajo nation and other Indigenous communities.
“In the early 1900s, when they were expanding the transmission grid, a lot of the plans didn’t include tribal nations and sovereign nations,” Johns said. The Rural Electrification Act of 1936, which offered federal loans to deploy electrical systems in rural areas across the country, but left out many tribal nations, is an example.
These policies have directly led to inequalities that the pandemic is now exacerbating. Both Johns and Red Cloud run job trainings in solar power, which they hope can help Native communities find their own solutions to this crisis, which continues to disrupt every aspect of life.
Typically, Cheromiah would have spent this spring traveling to tribal schools. But since the onset of the pandemic, the lack of energy and internet access means remote sessions were often impossible in many tribal communities. “Our students don’t even have the basics,” Cheromiah said.
Johns is particularly passionate about bringing electricity to these rural Native communities, knowing that it will ease financial burdens and help communities stay connected. “How many trips you take the store to load up on food, especially fresh fruits – those are things most Americans take for granted during this pandemic [because they have the] luxury of access to power and refrigeration,” Johns explains.
The pandemic has delayed several projects that aim to alleviate energy inequality in Indian country. Red Cloud and Johns have halted all solar jobs trainings. Light Up Navajo II, the second phase of a project that brought power to 225 Navajo homes in a 2019 pilot, has been put on hold.
Despite the challenges, Johns remains optimistic. Her non-profit, Native Renewables, which had only built a half-dozen solar units before the pandemic, hopes to begin construction in September for the first one hundred units. Red Cloud is eager to resume trainings, which he plans to do in the fall.
“There is going to be a huge shift towards clean energy, so what we’re doing is developing green teams so that when all of those jobs happen, Native people are going to be on the forefront,” said Red Cloud.
Beyond the economic potential of solar energy, Johns and Red Cloud believe that it offers a path towards building stronger communities that will be more resilient to future challenges. Red Cloud’s dream is ambitious – to guide a tribe to energy independence before the rest of mainstream America. Despite the obstacles, Johns shares the same vision.
“We can be an example of what self-sufficiency looks like and what self determination looks like on Indigenous lands.”
This article was amended on 12 August 2020 to fix an incorrect pronoun