Many Native Americans Struggle With Poverty. Easing Energy Regulations Could Help.

A significant percentage of Native Americans don't even have electricity—thanks in part to reservations being subject to overwhelming bureaucracy.

Onerous federal energy regulations that target reservations could be costing American tribes as much as $19 billion in potential earnings from wind and solar energy.

Were regulatory approval barriers for reservations eased, an influx of wealth and job opportunities from renewable energy projects could curb poverty rates in Natives, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Energy. Around 21 percent of Natives live in poverty—the highest of any minority group. 

The researchers, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, estimated the net value of wind and solar based on a combination of off-reservation leases paid to landowners and taxes received by local governments. They predict that tribes and their members could earn about the same either by leasing the right to wind and sun to an outside developer or by developing themselves. Under their current forecast of lease and tax earnings accrued under the projections of renewable energy demand through 2050, the amount could total anywhere between $7 to $19 billion depending on least and most aggressive wind and solar demand growth scenarios. 

According to the study, reservations today are 46 percent less likely to host wind farms and 110 percent less likely to host solar projects compared to neighboring non-reservation lands. Although the lands provided to Native Americans have historically been less agriculturally productive, those lands are now seen as perfectly conditioned for solar and wind energy, according to research from the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.

Federal policy, however, continues to pigeonhole Native Americans into farming because of how difficult it can be to use the land for anything else. Since the Dawes Act of 1887, which broke up communal land into parcels among Natives in an attempt to assimilate them into American society, and its subsequent reversal through the Wheeler-Howard Act, Native land policy has been overwhelmingly bureaucratized.

Despite its reversal, the Dawes Act has had long-lasting consequences. Inheritance rules imposed by the law spurred a phenomenon called fractionation, in which parcels of land had to be divided up between all heirs after the owners passed away. As a result, some parcels have hundreds of owners, increasing the cost of development exponentially as the number of owners who needed to be contacted for approval ballooned. 

A green light from the Bureau of Indian Affairs is also required for most energy projects on Native lands. "Typically, you have to work with different agencies, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs," said Sarah Johnston, one of the study's co-authors, "which, anecdotally, can be quite slow in terms of getting the necessary approvals." Additionally, ownership records from the Bureau are often incomplete, making cases involving fractionated land even more fraught.

Were reservation lands to host more energy facilities, this would help lower the rate of unelectrified tribal communities. In just Navajo Nation homes, the largest federally recognized tribe in the United States, 21 percent lack electricity.

Altogether, removing regulatory barriers would give Native American tribes the ability to move past the raw deals they've gotten throughout history, allowing them to generate electricity, wealth, and prosperity for their communities.