The Clean Energy Transition Institute (CETI) is excited to release Preserving a Way of Life, the second short film in our Claiming Power: Stories of Rural Communities and Clean Energy project. This video shows how clean energy solutions can help Tribal communities achieve energy sovereignty; bridge indigenous knowledge and Western science; and create a renewable energy workforce among Tribal members.
The Northwest Indian College (NWIC), the only accredited Tribal College serving Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, is expanding its engineering curriculum to focus on renewable energy and energy sovereignty.
NWIC is partnering with the Lummi Nation, home to the college’s main campus, which has developed a Strategic Energy Plan with the expressed goals of (1) improving economic and energy self-sufficiency, and (2) reducing emissions from energy production and use that contribute to global climate change, air quality degradation, and other adverse environmental and human health impacts.
The college also partners with Remote Energy and All Points North Foundation to conduct a hands-on solar energy technical and vocational training program, where students can learn how to install solar panels on a mock roof on NWIC’s main campus, which also has a 2.4 kW grid direct solar energy system.
Preserving a Way of Life shows how the NWIC program brings a Native voice to the clean energy transition, explaining how clean energy solutions are intuitive for cultures committed to caretaking and continuity of ancestral land and waters.
Lisa Redsteer, who is Navajo and does engineering outreach as a member of NWIC’s Natural Science Faculty, describes the absence of traditional wisdom in her previous work: “I did a couple of internships with NASA and through NASA, and one of the pieces that was really missing was traditional knowledge and traditional ecological knowledge.”
NWIC faculty member Anna Waschke also speaks about the parallels between Native culture and clean energy: “This idea of respect, of caring for not only your people, but all the nonhuman people, your nonhuman relatives…clean energy goes really well with that. It's a way where we can power and take what we need, while impacting the rest of the world as little as possible.”
Lummi Nation Office of Economic Policy Director Sean Lawrence tells viewers how renewable energy enables a livelihood for the Lummi, saying it has been a “dream for so long” for Lummi Nation members to be able to live and work on their homeland. NWIC’s Waschke also describes the energy freedom that comes from being able to produce power independent of the grid.
Lawrence further articulates how clean energy aligns with the Nation’s mission, explaining in the film: “The mission of Lummi Nation is to preserve, promote and protect our “Schelangen,” our way of life. We see clean energy as a pathway for that.”
Award-winning filmmaker Jessica Plumb, who produces the Claiming Power short films for CETI, wrote a blog about her experience making Preserving a Way of Life. Plumb writes, “This story suggests a powerful mix of economic development, traditional values, and future thinking, in Tribal engagement with the clean energy transition.”
The Claiming Power short films, along with our Community-Defined Decarbonization effort, are part of CETI’s rural and Tribal community decarbonization program, which seeks to ensure that rural communities are full participants in defining the benefits and challenges of decarbonization.
Please share your reactions to Preserving a Way of Life. Thank you so much for supporting our work to accelerate an equitable clean energy transition in the Northwest.
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