Power to the People
Pine Point Resilience Hub Starting in 2021, Akiing and 8th Fire Solar began a partnership with 10Power, a BIPOC and woman-owned solar company, and the Pine Point Elementary School to launch the ambitious Pine Point Resilience Hub. This project plans to address larger-scale energy poverty in the Pine Point community.
The Pine Point Community Resilience Hub will generate 809,068 kilowatt-hours of energy per year for a village currently facing economic challenges and will provide the community school with 100% of its electricity. This will completely negate the need to pay electric utility bills, which currently average around $71,600 and are paid to the Itasca Mantrap Cooperative. This project will also include backup batteries, ensuring the school and village have power during grid outages—an essential step to protect against harm caused by increasing blackouts during extreme weather events.
The project was installed in the fall of 2025, and is expected to provide the power fore the tribal school ! One of the project’s unique aspects is its use of solar panels made in Minnesota by Heliene in the Iron Range. Additionally, there is a strong commitment to training tribal members for both installation and maintenance, ensuring long-term sustainability and workforce development. The project was installed in October 2025, with hopes for a full connection and battery system by the end of the year. We have been working to negotiate a fair power purchase agreement with Itasca Mantrap Cooperative.
The Problem(s):
A lack of employment opportunities is a common trait for an indigenous community, whether it be because of distance, education level, or a biased employer. Poverty is a constant battle for many Native American families.
In the community of Pine Point, there is one gas station, one school, one community center & a single workforce building. The workforce building is the newest addition to the village of Pine Point, and it has already met its limited capacity of part-time workers. This tribally funded venture can only sustain a certain number of workers at a set number of weekly hours. Pine Point is situated around 30 minutes from two small towns, Detroit Lakes & Park Rapids (marked by red dots). These towns have a largely white population, with a huge wealth gap between low to medium-income families and well-off families with lake properties. These two distinct groups make the local indigenous people the minority, and they also provide fierce competition for housing and employment.
Many young native peoples adopt a “sink or swim” mentality, where survival and future success depend largely on acceptance into a college in a more populated area of the state. Once they have left the reservation, this next generation that would provide a viable workforce rarely returns to their poverty-stricken lands.
Predatory Pricing & Off-reservation Economic Flow
With an already limited land base from treaties and years of encroachment, tribal communities are surrounded and carved into service areas by off-reservation utility companies.
These utility companies disproportionately charge tribal members higher service rates, impose harsh emergency maintenance fees, & service tribal areas last during outages. Statewide data about energy burdens in Minnesota from the Department of Energy confirm that tribal communities face higher residential energy burdens than non-tribal communities.
While tribal members struggle, tribal governments are increasingly turning to renewable energy sources to combat the predatory pricing imposed by off-reservation utilities. There is a term in PV called "net-metering", this is the term used to define a utility's payback to solar energy sent to the grid by solar grid-tied systems. Net-metering is a part of Interconnection policies - the guidelines states and policymakers put in place regarding the safe and efficient connection of solar PV systems to the grid. In some states, solar PV is widely accepted, and payback rates or energy credits are incredible, while in other states, PV is scrutinized and bound in red
