Great Plains Tribes

Drawing On The Sacred Winds

Through utility-scale projects, the Great Plains tribes are creating healthier lands along with new local economies.


The Rosebud Sioux turbine paved the way for the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota to commission a 65-kilowatt turbine in 2005.

Photo by Bob Gough

For many tribal peoples, the winds are holy, bringing renewal, warmth and strength. And tribal lands are rich in wind. The wind energy potential on reservations nationwide exceeds 535 billion kilowatt-hours annually — enough to power more than 50 million homes annually.

Much of that resource is found on the northern Great Plains reservations. Indeed, the prairie winds and the Missouri River are inextricably tied to the culture and history of the Great Plains’ two-dozen tribes. Despite these gifts, the reservations never had the size or the moisture needed to sustain agricultural economies. Their richest bottomlands were flooded behind federal dams on the Missouri to generate electricity for everyone in the region except the tribes. But today, tribal leaders are drawing on the winds to forge a renewable energy economy — and the next chapter in a tradition promoting self-reliance and harmony between humankind and nature.

Since 1995, a coalition of Great Plains tribes known as the Intertribal Council On Utility Policy (COUP) has worked to generate jobs and new revenue streams through tribal-owned wind energy projects. These utility-scale turbines are arrayed along federal transmission lines that carry hydroelectric power from the mainstem Missouri River dams. That allows the tribes to sell surplus power to the Western Area Power Administration where it’s especially needed. (WAPA markets and transmits electricity from federal hydroelectric power plants.) As persistent drought throughout the West has reduced federal hydropower production nearly 50 percent, WAPA has filled the shortfall with lignite coal-fired electricity — significantly increasing greenhouse gas emissions near tribal lands.

Nationally, reservation households are 10 times less likely to be electrified than other U.S. households. Those households that are electrified pay a higher portion of their incomes to power energy-inefficient structures. The COUP intertribal energy vision
begins with making tribal housing more affordable and efficient through better design and retrofitting. The tribes can use energy audits, weatherization projects and local natural materials like straw bale and earthen plasters to create local jobs, save energy and money, and enhance the quality of life. But even with greater energy efficiency, small wind and solar projects are expensive, especially for tribal communities, where unemployment may be 50 percent.

In large-scale projects, however, the tribes have the opportunity to invest as a community in vibrant renewable energy-based economies. Through the Intertribal COUP’s phased wind-development plan, tribal communities will help meet America's growing energy demands, while becoming locally self-sufficient and generating revenues to help fund smaller community projects. Such projects include installing solar or wind systems at tribal schools facing increased utility costs and at tribal residences located too far from the local power lines to be able to afford expensive interconnection costs on top of monthly utility bills. Through utility-scale projects, the Great Plains tribes are creating healthier lands along with new local economies. ... more

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