Indigenous holders of clean energy knowledge are sharing it abroad

In the remote Australian desert community where Chris Croker’s family lives, solar power provided power to people.

It started with drinking water about 30 years ago. A solar-powered electric pump drew water from the dry ground. Then a tour company appeared with an eco-campsite featuring rugged landscapes and a family plantation of Quandong, the desert peach. They have 1,000 Quandong trees and the entire operation – from irrigation to sorting – is powered by solar energy.

“For our family personally, renewable energy means reclaiming our rights, living in the countryside and being economically independent,” says Croker, a member of the Luritja Nation.

This is not the case in Australia, where Aboriginal people make up 3.8% of the population and are struggling to claim a range of rights. This can be seen in the energy choices available to them: diesel generators that power larger Aboriginal communities spew noxious fumes in the middle of their towns, while the transmission lines of large-scale renewable energy projects bypass them on their way to power wealthier towns. As Australia has set ambitious goals to achieve 82% renewable energy by 2030, Croker set out to create an organization that would help advocate for a just energy transition – one that would not leave Aboriginal people on the margins or leave them with a meager leftover.

His research brought him to Canada, where indigenous communities are the largest holders of assets in clean energy projects, after utilities and the Crown. There he found Indigenous Clean Energy (ICE), a non-profit organization that since 2016 has been building capacity and expertise in clean energy and how to make it a tool of indigenous sovereignty. Croker was drawn to ICE’s approach, which “has turned power dynamics upside down by driving First Nations-led government initiatives and policies, which is the opposite of what we have in Australia.”

According to a 2022 report released by ICE, there are more than 200 renewable energy projects in Canada – hydro, wind, solar and bioenergy – that involve Indigenous people. This includes sole ownership, joint ownership and certain financial benefits. Since 2017, the number of medium and large domestic clean energy projects has increased by almost 30%. Hydro has the largest share (56.5%), followed by wind (22.9%), solar energy (11.8%), bioenergy (7.1%) and hybrid projects (1.7%). Small, local energy systems are scattered throughout the country. In April, British Columbia’s Ulkatcho First Nation announced it would build the country’s largest off-grid solar farm. This is a $30 million project that will generate up to 70% of the electricity needed by the community and dramatically reduce diesel consumption. and in the process sell their energy to BC Hydro.

All of this is the result of decades of work dating back to the early 21st century, when communities began to push into energy space, negotiate co-ownership of projects on ancestral lands, and win legal battles rooted in treaty rights that established that projects should include financial benefits for indigenous communities. In 2019, ICE was officially registered as an independent organization. He has led several iterations of the Catalysts program, an intensive capacity-building program that gives participants the tools to make clean energy projects a reality by connecting them with coaches and mentors on everything from energy planning to environmental protection and business management.

In 2020, ICE launched its Global Hub, intending to take its body of knowledge overseas to help other indigenous people facing similar challenges.

“The lessons we have learned in so-called Canada can be shared with our indigenous relatives around the world,” says Daphne Kay, manager of the Global Hub, who is from Cowessess First Nation, a Treaty 4 territory in Saskatchewan. “It is not a silver bullet, it is not a one-size-fits-all solution, and our relationship between nations is about learning from each other.”

Australia was ICE’s first foray. It operated as a sister organization to the First Nations Clean Energy Network, which Croker co-founded with Karrina Nolan, Yorta Yorta. The organizations co-authored the PowerMakers program, under which 32 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people received training covering community engagement, fair partnership agreements, ownership models and political negotiations. Croker says Australia lags behind Canada when it comes to social inclusion. The First Nations Clean Energy Network has brought together 15 Aboriginal energy projects. While specific differences hinder progress – Aboriginal people in Australia, for example, have no treaty rights – learning how to advocate for decision-makers has proven instrumental, Croker says. “They helped us mobilize and organize.”

ICE’s work also extended to the Global South, to Colombia, where a delegation visited two indigenous groups this year: the Cofán community in the southern department of Nariño and the Muisca community in the Boyacá department near the capital Bogotá.

“We talked about decolonizing power and what decolonial support means for our relatives,” says Freddie Campbell, director of energy and climate at ICE and a Michif woman from British Columbia’s Ktunaxa Kinbasket Territory, who visited Colombia with Kay at the invitation of both communities. Part of this involves going beyond the colonial spaces of governments and aid organizations into the territories, visiting homes and meeting families. Aura Balanta, an Afro-Colombian activist and artist who helped lead the ICE delegation with a group called Grassroots Movement of Movements, calls it an exercise in “ancestral diplomacy.” This included ceremonies, exchanging gifts, and listening to each other.

“Developing this kind of bond with relatives is unheard of and shouldn’t be the case,” Campbell says. “It was a really powerful feeling.”
Balanta says that ICE is the first organization she has met that approaches the ecological transition in this way. He hopes ICE can help the government of Colombian President Gustavo Petro, which has stopped entering into new oil and gas contracts and is shifting to renewable energy sources as it pursues a lofty plan to create 20,000 “energy communities,” many of them on indigenous territory.

Although Petro’s government has changed the way the Colombian state takes into account the views of indigenous people, Balanta says significant problems in this approach remain. “Communities are not seen as actors who will manage their own processes, but as recipients of charitable aid,” says Balanta, pointing to a government compensation program that provided families with solar panels but, in the case of the Cofán community, no tools or instructions on how to make to function properly.

The transformation should be about empowering indigenous peoples, Balanta says, noting that they make up 6.2% of the world’s population but protect 80% of the planet’s biodiversity. Learning between indigenous communities goes both ways, Campbell and Kay emphasize.

“While clean energy is a bridge for us to assert our sovereignty, be leaders in this space and build systems that work for us and work differently, things are very different in the (global) South,” says Campbell , who has observed greater connection with land in the communities visited by the ICE delegation, and smaller consumer-oriented societies. As a result, some of the indigenous people Kay spoke to don’t necessarily feel they need to be part of the energy transition.

“It wasn’t until we started talking about what was possible and how many cross-cutting benefits could come from energy projects that the topic caught (these communities’) interest,” Kay says.