Just last week, Jill Cliburn of Plains Justice’s Clean Energy Ambassadors program made the trip to south central South Dakota, home of the Rosebud Sioux tribe and Cherry Todd Electric Cooperative. Last summer (I remember because I was so very, very pregnant at the time), Sinte Gleska University hosted a clean energy planning meeting attended by staff from Plains Justice, Dakota Rural Action, Dakota Resource Council, Center on Rural Affairs and Intertribal Council on Utility Policy. While we met in a classroom, students were outside learning straw bale construction on a building that has since become the headquarters of the university’s bison husbandry program. What an inspirational place to be! The tribal chairman welcomed us and university staff served a lunch of bison stew and wojapi, a fantastic thick berry pudding.
At that meeting we cooked up a plan for two tribal members to run for positions on the board of Cherry Todd, which had never included a Native American even though the utility’s customers are more than 80% tribal members. We were beside ourselves a few weeks later when both candidates were elected! Our friends made history!
Jill did a training by phone right away for the new board members, to educate them about the basics of cooperative utility management and the kinds of energy efficiency and renewable energy programming that they might consider. Many people who get involved with small consumer-owned utilities as board members or even staffers have very little background in this sector, so early training and a direct phone number for expert help are critical. The kinds of online resources that most of us take for granted can be tough to access in areas that lack rural broadband – and sometimes even phone service. As one tribal member told me: “I can’t wait until we get rural broadband in here. Then I can have a phone!”
Working with their new board colleagues, the new board members successfully brought Jill back for an in-person training this summer, which she talks about in her new blog post on the Clean Energy Ambassadors network site. Basic energy efficiency programming can have a big impact at Rosebud, where poverty is a constant presence.
An important lesson we’re learning in this outreach is that no two utilities are the same, and solutions must be carefully tailored to needs. Listening can accomplish more than talking. But as change happens, in the unlikeliest places, what an amazing feeling!