Logan PiersonSpecial to ICT
When a 6.4 magnitude earthquake hit Humboldt County, California in December 2022, the region went dark – except for the Blue Lake Rancheria Tribe.
Utilizing micro-grids – small grids that can run both connected to a main utility grid and independently – the tribe remained powered for the day-long outage and turned the reservation into an emergency resource center with gas, Wi-Fi, power to charge devices, hotel rooms for those displaced and more.
Maia Cheli, senior development manager at the Schatz Energy Research Center at Cal Poly Humboldt, told ICT that the Blue Lake Rancheria Tribe’s connection to the land and intentionality in their climate-mitigation actions has been exciting to see.
“Blue Lake Rancheria has been, and continues to be, an incredible leader in resiliency solutions that are rooted in also mitigating the climate crisis – and that forward thinkingness of the tribe has saved lives here on the north coast [of California],” Cheli said.
The tribe is one of three nominees for a clean energy award that will be presented at the inaugural People of the Sun event, a ticketed event that is being held to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Standing Rock protest and will focus on clean energy in Indigenous communities.
The People of the Sun event will feature artists, musicians, actors and designers and will take place September 16-18 at the Prairie Knights Casino and Resort on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation near the site of the massive protest that began in 2016.
Indigenized Energy, a Native-led nonprofit that is hosting the event, was founded to help tribes achieve energy sovereignty and transition away from fossil fuels following the Standing Rock protest, which drew thousands of people to a rural area less than a mile north of the Standing Rock Reservation. They gathered to fight the 1,176-mile Dakota Access Pipeline, which crosses the Missouri River near Cannon Ball, North Dakota, just north of the Standing Rock Reservation.
Indigenized Energy will present the People of the Sun Honors to tribal nations and Indigenous leaders for advancing energy sovereignty across Indian Country. The company’s CEO and founder Cody Two Bears, a former Standing Rock Sioux Tribe council member for the Cannon Ball district, the area where the protesters gathered, said he hopes the awards inspire greater investment in clean energy and connect those already doing that work.
“We also want to share examples of what’s working, what’s innovative, and most importantly, we want those philanthropists, those foundations – those people that can support and make these projects happen in Indian country – we want them to also hear those stories,” Two Bears said.
The anniversary celebration is set to entertain and host guests such as actors Mark Ruffalo and Shailene Woodley, and host musicians such as the band Mumford and Sons and Taboo from the Black Eyed Peas.
“It’s just another thing of coming out and hearing some great music, culture, entertainment, different things like that, while celebrating how far we’ve come at this level around energy sovereignty and to be able to showcase what’s next,” Two Bears said.
The Blue Lake Rancheria Tribe has been nominated for the Energy Sovereignty Champion Award – alongside the Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin and the Yakima Tribe of Washington. – which will be presented at the People of the Sun event.
A story worth sharing
The Blue Lake Rancheria Tribe in California has been at the forefront of Indigenous energy sovereignty and is known for its work developing, upgrading and sustaining microgrids.
“They were the early leaders in tribal energy resilience and microgrids,” said Two Bears of the Blue Lake Rancheria Tribe. “They completed their first microgrid nearly a decade ago. They didn’t wait for a roadmap. They did demonstrate what tribal-led energy resilience could look like. Their successes had an impact beyond their own community, creating a model other tribes can really learn from.”
In 2009, the tribe adopted its Strategic Energy Plan, which prioritized the establishment of a clean, reliable energy supply and net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. They partnered with the Schatz Energy Research Center at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt in 2015. This partnership, among others, allowed the tribe to complete its first renewable energy micro-grid that went live in July 2017.
Heidi Moore-Guynup, director of tribal and government affairs and the director of sustainability for the tribe, said the tribe now has four independent micro-grids and it utilizes connected arrays of solar panels and a battery energy storage system.
She said tribes in the area are often left feeling underserved with unreliable access to electrical services from the main grid, harming people’s everyday lives and making economic pursuits more difficult, but their micro-grids have been shown to be effective in solving this problem.
Most recently, the Blue Lake Rancheria Tribe has been working toward completing a deal with the Department of Energy to complete the Tribal Energy Resilience and Sovereignty project, which will create a “nested micro-grid” initiative. It would transform the tribe’s independent micro-grids by networking them together, allowing the micro-grids to act as substations.
This means that they could send power from one or multiple micro-grids to a location that may be in an emergency, or cut one grid off from the others if any difficulties or concerns occur in one grid, such as a fault on a power line.
The Blue Lake Rancheria’s system will act as the testing model before new micro-grids are established to address the consistently unreliable circuit, Hoopa 1101, which affects the Hoopa and Yurok tribes, Cheli said. It will be part of a long term, collaborative project that is expected to wrap up around 2031, said Moore-Guynup.
“Indigenous people have been the original stewards of the land, air, and waters, and protecting the environment has been part of the tribal ethos since time immemorial,” she said. “The Blue Lake Rancheria tribe takes that continued responsibility to heart, and they really employ the concept of seven generations. So, not just making sure that the climate is healthy and stable for the current tribal members and the elders, but for seven generations into the future.”
Moore-Guynup said being nominated for the award is an honor and she hopes others take inspiration from the tribe’s work.
“The cost of not doing what we’re doing is just too great to the detriment of the future generations that are so important for the tribe and should be so important to everyone across the globe,” she said.
Standing Rock: 10 years later
In early April 2016, after hearing news of a new crude oil pipeline planned to be built on unceded Oceti Sakowin treaty territory, a handful of members of the Standing Rock, Cheyenne River and Rosebud Sioux tribes formed a water protector camp near the pipeline’s construction site at Lake Oahe.
In 2016, with youth at the front, the camp slowly swelled, propelled quickly by the growing national movement that eventually garnered the hashtag #NoDAPL on social media. Eventually, thousands of people occupied camps in Cannon Ball, and the protest became the largest Indigenous demonstration in decades.
Private security guards shot pepper spray at protesters and unleashed guard dogs. Local police used water cannons, tear gas, rubber bullets, and concussion grenades on protestors. Hundreds of protestors were arrested by local police, including celebrities like actors Woodley and Ruffalo.
By February 2017, protestors were forced to leave the area, and four months later, half a million gallons of crude oil began to flow through the pipeline and have continued to flow ever since.
But the movement succeeded in bringing international attention to Indigenous sovereignty, environmental justice and energy development and inspired a host of environmental and community activism in the years that followed.
Two Bears said the anniversary event’s organizers aim to hold the celebration each year in order for those in Indian Country to celebrate the protest, share positive stories and support each other.
“We learn from each other. We share examples with one another, and it’s important to be able to highlight their work even more so moving forward,” he said.
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