Researching and creating the second short film in CETI’s Claiming Power series was an inspiring journey. Filmed at the Lummi Nation, Preserving a Way of Life shows how the path forward into a new energy future can be informed and strengthened by looking back, particularly for communities centered around traditional indigenous values. Clean energy solutions are a natural match for cultures committed to caretaking, and continuity, of ancestral land and waters.

This five-minute film highlights one component of a larger, comprehensive vision, launched by the Lummi Nation’s Strategic Energy Plan. The Lummi Nation is pursuing an energy future that encompasses economic opportunities, energy sovereignty, climate imperatives, and community resilience. Northwest Indian College, with its main campus at the Lummi Nation, is a key partner that is integrating educational opportunities in this strategic vision.

The primary challenge of Preserving a Way of Life was selecting which component of an ambitious range of initiatives to feature. When our conversation began over a year ago, the Lummi Nation was celebrating a new solar array on the nation’s K-12 school campus, while planning a major addition of solar capacity on the administration building and other sites.

The community was about to launch a microgrid feasibility study and considering additional power generation options. With these steps and more on the horizon, education and workforce training emerged as a vital part of the strategy, which is evident in the interview with Sean Lawrence, Director of the Lummi Office of Economic Policy, who speaks about “creating a pipeline” for Tribal members who hope to work in the renewable energy industry, on and off their Tribal homeland.

Stephanie Bostwick, Chair of the Engineering Department at Northwest Indian College, has been implementing an innovative combination of teaching strategies linked to energy strategies, from the elementary level to higher education. This year, Lummi school children began to learn about renewable energy in elementary classrooms, with help from new teaching kits and a teacher training program.

Northwest Indian College serves Tribal students from all over the Pacific Northwest. Bostwick and her team, including two faculty members featured in this film, are designing a unique program that brings traditional ecological knowledge and contemporary engineering and science studies together.

“Physics is a very intuitive science,” says Professor Anna Waschke, “that has been practiced by first people since time immemorial.” Waschke and her colleagues are developing a new textbook, designed to teach physics concepts through a historical, indigenous lens.

This goal resonates with fellow faculty member Lisa Redsteer, a scientist of Navajo descent, who interned at NASA before joining the engineering team at Northwest Indian College. Now she relishes the opportunity to foster a network of native women in science, mathematics, and engineering.

The day I arrived to film a workforce training program at the college, students and community members were learning to install solar panels on a brand new “mock roof,” constructed to facilitate solar installation, at an accessible level for teaching and practicing new skills. The mock roof is a permanent addition at the heart of the Northwest Indian College campus, next to the Center for Student Success—a building already covered in solar panels.

Instructors from Remote Energy led the workshop, in conjunction with Northwest Indian College faculty. The workshop was designed for community members with a range of backgrounds, many who were completely new to this type of work. Over a few days, participants would become familiar with the key steps of installing a rooftop solar array and set on a path to potential employment at the Lummi Nation and beyond.

These skills are essential to the emerging vision of energy sovereignty. This teaching team is committed to empowering Tribal communities to chart their own energy future: from planning electricity generation and storage, to sustaining systems and fostering resiliency. They hope to take their training tools on the road, to other Tribal campuses, and the college is in the process of outfitting a mobile teaching unit for this purpose.

If energy creation is a form of harvest, it can be viewed through the same principles of respect for the natural world that underlie the relationship between indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest, and the places they have stewarded for millennia. This story suggests a powerful mix of economic development, traditional values, and future thinking, in Tribal engagement with the clean energy transition.

It was a privilege to watch this dream take shape in real time, in small steps, as a mock roof steadily filled with solar panels, amid a sense of shared purpose. In Waschke’s words: “We assume we're going to be here thousands of years from now, so we need to take care of our home. All of our food, all of our medicine, all of our culture, everything comes from here. The idea of clean energy goes really well with that.”

With gratitude for the opportunity to share this story from the sovereign Lummi Nation,

Jessica