Energy and Environment Solar Self-Reliance
(Page 5 of 6)
Back on the mesas of Hopi, solar installer Dalton grabs
some equipment and heads out down the dirt road; Native
American communities of the region are learning from the
Hopi about solar technologies, and Dalton says he hopes
Native Sun has helped customers and potential solar
entrepreneurs to reconnect to a more ecologically and
culturally sustainable way of living. His work at Native
Sun exemplifies the vitality of the Hopi culture and its
strength in today’s world. The people who survived
for a thousand years on the edge of a cliff perhaps have a
few lessons for us all.
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Winona LaDuke is an enrolled member of the Mississippi
Band of the Anishinaabeg tribe, and she lives on the White
Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota. She is program
director of Honor the Earth, a national foundation that
supports environmental initiatives within indigenous
communities. In 1996 and 2000, LaDuke was the Green
Party’s candidate for U.S. vice president, and she is
the author of several books, including All Our
Relations.
Natural Resources on Tribal Lands
Although Native Americans are among the poorest in the
United States, their lands are home to a wealth of natural
resources. Two-thirds of the country’s uranium;
one-third of all Western low-sulfur coal, and vast
hydroelectric, oil and natural gas resources are all on
Native American land. Some of the largest corporations in
the world have access to mine these resources through
leases overseen by the U.S. Department of the Interior. Too
often, Native American communities receive less than the
full value of the resources in royalties, and are left with
huge slag piles, uranium mill tailings and abandoned
uranium mine shafts (more than 1,000 on the Navajo
Reservation alone) when mining operations end.
Both the Navajo and Hopi tribes have had disputes with
Peabody Energy’s Black Mesa Coal Mine, which spans
both reservations and employs members of both tribes. The
Navajo Nation took the federal government to court after
the Interior Department accepted a lease rate from Peabody
worth much less than the market value of the coal. Now,
some members of the Hopi tribe are engaged in a battle with
Peabody over the company’s use of reservation water
resources.
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