‘A roof over our people’s heads’: the Indigenous US tribe building hempcrete homes

When Earl Pendleton first heard about building houses out of hemp more than a decade ago, it seemed like a farfetched idea.

To start, it was still illegal to grow hemp – the non-psychoactive strain of Cannabis sativa – in the US. Importing it from overseas was prohibitively expensive. But Pendleton, a member of the Lower Sioux Indian Community, was intrigued by early research that showed hemp could be transformed into nontoxic construction materials that allow for faster build times and result in lowcarbon, energy-efficient houses.

Which was exactly what he saw his tribe needed at the time. Roughly half of the tribal nation’s enrolled members – about 1,120 people – are currently in need of housing. With his encouragement, the community started experimenting with hemp as a housing construction material – also known as hempcrete – back in 2016, even before it was decriminalized in the

US. This month, the tribal nation is set to open the first vertically integrated hempcrete facility in the nation, complete with its own growing operation.

When the Lower Sioux’s 20,000-sqft, $6.2m onsite facility opens in April, the tribal nation will become a leader in the growing green building movement.

But the decision to invest in hemp was first born out of the Lower Sioux’s commitment to sovereignty and selfdetermination. “The whole idea was just to be able to service our own needs, because we’re short at least 150 houses [on the reservation],” said Pendleton.

He was impressed with how hempbased building materials resulted in mold-, pest-, and fire-resistant houses. Additionally, it helps regulate temperatures, keeping homes cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.

“If we could cut down on our members’ energy costs, we had to try it,” said Pendleton.

With eco-friendly properties such as improved carbon dioxide sequestration, hempcrete has gained traction as the construction industry looks to lessen its environmental impact. Since its development in the 1980s, hempcrete has become increasingly popular in Europe, where it is often used to renovate older stone or lime

Danny Desjarlais, far right, and his crew standing in front of the first prefabricated hempcrete panel house in Minnesota, installed in December 2023. The walls of this 520-sq-ft house were installed in less than six hours. Photograph: Lower Sioux Industrial Hemp Project

The Lower Sioux construction crew placing a prefabricated hempcrete wall panel, which weighs approximately 700lb. Photograph: Lower Sioux Industrial Hemp Project