Indigenous Priorities and Renewable Energy

By Gabrielle Robertson

As a May 2022 graduate and non-indigenous person, I’m honored to contribute a Community Voices post during the US’ Native American Heritage Month. While this month is crowded with excellent resources by indigenous voices, I want to chime in about an opportunity that changed my understanding of renewable energy policy through education and research with indigenous leaders and teachers.

While at Fletcher, I cross-enrolled in Harvard’s Nation-Building I & II classes on a recommendation from an alum.* The classes focus on contemporary indigenous concerns, drawing from Harvard’s resources on these topics. The teachers and the TAs have extensive networks through involvement in the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development (HPAIED), where faculty and affiliates perform research and honor Native nations’ achievements. Another teacher is Chief Justice of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation’s Supreme Court and a UCLA law professor. The term “Nation-Building” refers to the efforts of Native nations coexisting on the same soil as the US to regain self-determination, i.e., deciding their own governmental structures, education systems, health infrastructure, and other institutions. At the same time, the US government spends much less per capita on Native citizens’ education, health, and other rights than non-Native citizens’, despite treaty-based responsibilities.

The Nation-Building I class covers this history in the “January term” – an accelerated term at the end of winter break. I’ve never enjoyed 5 consecutive 6-hour Zoom days more. The course creators invited over 20 leaders from Native nations to tell of diverse initiatives – revitalizing long-standing practices, such as healing to wellness courts; reestablishing sovereignty over culturally consequential institutions, like education; or monitoring environmental issues, such as pollution in subsistence fishing areas. The students focused on different aspects of nation-building, but all were impassioned about indigenous rights, and a few of them were citizens of Native nations themselves.

After the rapid overview of Nation-Building I, I shouldn’t have been surprised how much more I had to learn in the project-centered Nation-Building II class. Before spring semester, the teacher asks for projects from dozens of nations or Native-focused organizations. In the first two weeks, students choose projects and form small groups. From there, students independently decide project deliverables and timelines with their tribal “clients.”

I and a project partner worked directly with Igiugig, an Alaskan Native village, collecting information on the many risks of diesel dependence compared to a renewable energy transition. We interviewed village council members, policy experts, and state government employees, integrating qualitative analysis and economic policy analysis to create a report for the village council.

The transition seemed at first like a simple win-win. Igiugig and many other Alaskan Native villages want to use renewable energy instead of diesel. Not only would transitioning to renewable energy reduce costs and cost variability from global oil markets – energy market prices are inherently unstable, and Igiugig has to fly in shipments of diesel, which only adds to its cost of supply – it would also fulfill Igiugig’s environmental ethic and its dependence on healthy lands, waters, and sea ice patterns for subsistence living.

The complicated truth became clear as our project progressed. A state policy subsidizes energy price differences between diesel- and grid-dependent Alaskan residents. It’s intended to help rural communities afford power, but because renewable energy usage would reduce diesel usage and is not subsidized, the well-meaning policy introduces huge financial risks for communities. Worse, the subsidy calculation is non-transparent and retroactively applied. With little support in the Alaskan state congress, Native communities fear losing the subsidy altogether if they try to reform it – spelling financial ruin for most.

To maintain their subsidy level, the village could purchase renewable power from another entity, so the purchased power would (hopefully) be counted in the subsidy calculation. However, most of the costs around renewable energy come not from usage (river flow is free), but from purchasing and updating the equipment required to harvest and store energy or switch to diesel for gaps in coverage (there’s not much river flow when the river ices over). Though grants exist to help Native communities afford renewable energy equipment, it’s not clear whether or not the long-term grant-funded equipment costs would be counted in the subsidy calculation.

Another issue is dependency on outside entities. Having other entities control the sale of renewable energy to the village, or set grant requirements, risks decision-making power, however well-intentioned those outside parties. Plus, when equipment breaks, people in rural Alaska are adept at fixing diesel systems, not computer-based renewable energy systems. Without local repair and maintenance capacity, power and heat loss could last for dangerously long periods.

Coming into the project, I was fully pro-renewables, only seeing benefits for the villagers’ well-being and the environment. However, after this class, I see why Igiugig’s village council needed time and information to aid their decision-making. Is it right to put expectation for a renewable energy transition on financially vulnerable communities, without understanding their full political reality? How do power imbalances at the state level interact with federal oppression and neglect to diminish Alaskan Native villages’ sovereignty? How can renewable energy access initiatives be designed to support sovereignty?

For our final, we gave a presentation to the village council leader, AlexAnna Salmon, and other councilmembers. When I shared my change of perspective, AlexAnna grew excited: “Yes! That’s exactly what this is all about.” The Nation-Building classes are an opportunity to see your discipline from a new perspective. Fletcherites, who may one day make decisions affecting communities they’re exterior to, need to better understand what sovereignty means and what respecting sovereignty looks like. Even energy policy enthusiasts, especially when technocratic and top-down mindsets dominate the field, can gain a new viewpoint.

*Cross-enrolling in a Harvard class can be difficult without a personal recommendation. Here's the HKS calendar, with cross-registration deadlines. If you’re interested, you might email the course professors and TA's (linked above), as well as the HKS Registrar's office, about participating. For Nation-Building I, Fletcher students can enroll but not audit January term classes. For Nation-Building II, I was able to cross-enroll through the usual steps. The professor is responsive, so there were no issues getting my grade in time for graduation.

Gabrielle Robertson graduated with her MALD degree from Fletcher in May 2022. This is the final post in the Native American Heritage Month blog series. Read the first post here and second post here.