Our focus has been in fiber varieties, with an interest in reducing any fossil fuel use in production and in processing. We’ve sourced varieties from Canada and Europe, with the help of Patagonia and our friends at the Lift Economy. We grew those seeds in fields on and around the White Earth Reservation. We did our best to plant with organic fertilizers, using fish emulsion and horse manure to build our soils. We learned from our experience and by talking to as many folks as possible.
That said, we have a lot of experience here in small field crops, horse cultivation, and traditional varieties. We grew in small plots, hand seeded, and in a larger 20-acre plot, mechanically harvested with 40-year-old equipment.
We also put in a field with horses because some of our partnerships here involve not only our horse-drawn agriculture, but also those of our Amish neighbors. We’ve come to collaborate, as we have similar interests in terms of technology and geography.
We provided seeds to tribes throughout the region, all interested in the same questions: How do you grow it? And, what can you do with it?
What we found is that the plant will teach you: Don’t be in a rush. We are re-creating an industry from the seed to the product—whether smokable or for manufacturing. Some tribes are looking at materials processing—car parts, bags, etc.—others are looking at hempcrete, an improvement on concrete because of its sustainability and the fact that it is a carbon sink.
There’s a lot of room in the New Green Revolution. After all, if you are going to change the materials economy—well, the whole economy—you will need a lot of producers and also some folks in manufacturing. That’s the goal. Indeed, if hemp’s potential is realized, we can transform the materials economy, and that’s revolutionary. That’s our work now, to investigate, vet, and find technologies and economic models that can be replicated.
And though tribes have been reluctant to get into the hemp and cannabis industry, particularly under the Trump era, there’s a growing interest among Native people in this new Green Revolution.
The Wisconsin-based Oneida tribe, strategically situated near Green Bay, Wisconsin, points to a growing market for hempcrete, and hemp hurd, which can be used for insulation.
The Sisseton Tribe, based in present-day South and North Dakota, has been growing hemp for two years in collaboration with researchers from the University of Minnesota. They’re looking at fiber hemp for a composite bag facility—like shopping bags. The tribe has an industrial facility on the reservation, and also rail access.
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March 05, 2021 at 04:09PM
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Op-ed: Indigenous Tribes Are Reviving Traditional Hemp Economies - Civil Eats
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