TEXT OF STORY
Bill Radke: A huge gathering of American Indian businesses continues today. It’s the The Annual Reservation Economic Summit in Las Vegas. There’s plenty of talk there about tribal casinos, Native American entrepreneurship and poverty, which still plagues many reservations. But in the first of two parts, Laurie Stern of American Radio Works profiles one Indian reservation trying to lift its fortunes through wind power.
Laurie Stern: The Lakota Sioux call the wind their relative: constant and strong. Now, they’re going to put that relative to work.
Eileen Briggs: Our focus is developing the wind and getting it sold now, that’s our focus.
Eileen Briggs is president of Four Winds Energy Corporation. She says the tribe has been measuring the wind for a decade, getting ready for the right deal. The “right deal” turns out to be an agreement with Boston-based Citizens Energy to build a $400 million wind-farm.
Caryle Duchenaux works for the tribe’s environmental department:
Caryle Duchenaux: There’s been a lot of interested developers going back eight, 10 years. They were wanting to give the tribe a portion rather than a piece of the pie.
But with Citizens Energy, the tribe will get a 20 percent ownership stake, and will also collect fees from leasing land for the turbines. The project could help the tribe become financially self-sufficient.
Briggs: We need hope. I mean our young people need to see that we have something that’s moving us forward.
The Cheyenne River reservation lies just west of the Missouri River in central South Dakota, more than a million acres of grazing land for cattle and buffalo. But leasing land to ranchers isn’t very lucrative, and the only other jobs here are with the tribal government or the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The average income is only $8,000 a year.
Duchenaux: Tribe ain’t got no money, so you’re working for $12 bucks an hour or less.
The wind project may not be profitable for years. But it will provide jobs of all kinds, and a way to retain native talent.
Duchenaux: Well, you would need your biologists, archaeologist, all the sciences. We have those kinds of people, but they’ve left the reservation. That would bring them back.
The tribe has applied for a place on the grid that supplies electricity to South Dakota. If the plans ply out, turbines could be turning in three or four years.
In Eagle Butte, South Dakota, I’m Laurie Stern for Marketplace.
There’s a lot happening in the world. Through it all, Marketplace is here for you.
You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible.
Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.
