Henry Red Cloud: a solar warrior for native America
Henry Red Cloud returned to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to found Lakota Solar Enterprises, which builds and installs solar-heating equipment that saves low-income families money on heating bills.
Henry Red Cloud directs the work of Lakota Solar Enterprises, his American Indian-owned and operated business dedicated to providing renewable energy to some of the poorest communities in the United States.
Photo by Dan Bihn
Henry Red Cloud鈥檚 address is 1001 Solar Warrior Road on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. But the road sign hasn鈥檛 arrived. A windmill towering over the cottonwoods in the draw of White Clay Creek marks the location of Red Cloud Renewable Energy Center and his 鈥淪olar Warrior Community.鈥�
It consists of a mud-and-straw-bale roundhouse for trainings, a whimsically painted Quonset hut factory for assembling solar air heaters, an array of solar panels from Germany, a horse trailer that doubles as a paper recycling center for making insulation, a vegetable garden, and a new concrete foundation for what will become a 20-person dormitory.
Here Red Cloud directs the work of Lakota Solar Enterprises, his American Indian-owned and operated business dedicated to providing renewable energy to some of the poorest communities in the United States.
The business has been part of a journey home for the 52-year-old Oglala Lakota man. He left the reservation to join the civil rights movement in the 1970s, then found himself working construction, walking high steel in cities around the country.
But when he returned home, he faced the reality of few jobs and little housing. He crafted teepees and took volunteer training from Trees, Water & People, which later became his partner organization.
One night, trying to sleep in the back seat of his car, Red Cloud had the vision for Lakota Solar: training people right on the reservation to build and install solar heaters so they could study at home and support the extended family, or tiospaye. Later, he added a buffalo-ranching cooperative to the enterprise.
鈥淭he house, the buffalo, renewable energy: I鈥檓 not into it to become a millionaire,鈥� Red Cloud says. 鈥淚鈥檓 just here passing it on to the next generation like the grandfathers did for us. That way surely their prophecy is going to be realized.鈥�
Red Cloud鈥檚 16-month-old granddaughter is the seventh generation descended from Makhpiya Luta, or Chief Red Cloud, who negotiated the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, which left 60 million acres of buffalo hunting grounds to the Great Sioux Nation 鈥� until Congress later whittled it into smaller reservation parcels.
鈥淥ur ancestors made a treaty with the US government,鈥� Red Cloud recounts. But they also made 鈥渁 pact with the Creator for seven generations鈥� 鈥� hearkening to a well-known prophecy that they would suffer if they did not provide for their descendants鈥� future prosperity.
Red Cloud was raised by his grandparents. 鈥淵ou can get an education and you can live a comfortable life,鈥� he remembers his grandfather saying, 鈥渂ut if you want to have a really good life, create some work for other people.鈥�
To date, the Red Cloud Center has trained 84 people, most of whom have secured jobs based on the experience 鈥� a striking accomplishment given the staggering unemployment across Indian country.
Lakota Solar Enterprises has built and installed more than 1,200 small-scale individual solar heating systems. The heaters save low-income homeowners up to 30 percent on utility bills that, over the course of a freezing Northern Plains winter, can add up to more than $1,000.
The systems are Red Cloud鈥檚 own innovation: For two years, he fiddled with a 1970s design to come up with the $2,500 unit his business produces today.
鈥淲e鈥檙e using 21st century material and tweaking it Lakota-style,鈥� he says.
Recently, Red Cloud has engaged 24 Northern Plains tribes as partners. The tribes have been spending millions of dollars of federal funding to assist tribal members with energy costs, such as propane. Now they can use some of the money for energy efficiency and to send tribal members to Red Cloud鈥檚 renewable energy courses.
Red Cloud also has contracts to install wind turbines and solar arrays atop public health clinics on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Indian Reservations. He hopes the projects will help topple what he considers to be a wall of skepticism about green building techniques 鈥� the legacy of failed development projects on the reservations.
鈥淲e are just getting back to the memory of the old way and becoming sustainable again,鈥� Red Cloud says. 鈥淲e have always had our Sun Dance ceremonies. We鈥檙e warriors doing our warriors鈥� deed in the 21st century for the seventh generation.鈥�
鈥� Talli Nauman wrote this article for聽, the Winter 2012 issue of YES! Magazine. Talli is co-founder and co-director of the Aguascalientes, Mexico-based bilingual independent media project Periodismo para Elevar la Conciencia Ecol贸gica, PECE (Journalism to Raise Environmental Awareness), initiated with a MacArthur grant in 1994.
*听聽first appeared in聽.
鈥� Sign-up to receive a weekly selection of practical and inspiring Change Agent articles by聽.