AGH staff visit up to 10 firewood banks each year to assess the impact of grants, learn more about firewood and stove issues facing grantees, and help firewood banks connect and learn more from each other. Hannah Stinson, who lives in Shell, Wyoming, drove to South Dakota for this visit.
In September I visited the Oglala Lakota Indian Pine Ridge Reservation in the southwest corner of South Dakota, home to the Oglala Lakota people. This reservation covers over 3,400 sq. miles, with a population of 32,000. The people of this community experience hardship from years of historically unjust treatment and disinvestment. Between the distant town centers, grasslands, and agricultural cropland there exists culture and community, neighbors doing whatever it takes to help each other, and resilience.
The town of Pine Ridge is the tribal administrative headquarters that manages social services and tribal affairs. Despite efforts to provide for all tribal residents, having enough support is a constant battle. Several non-profit organizations back up the tribal energy assistance and social services with their own firewood programs that focus on getting people the heating fuel they need no matter what it takes.
I had the pleasure of meeting with Jeri Baker, the executive director of One Spirit, a tribal serving organization that provides educational programs to the Pine Ridge Reservation. All of One Spirit’s programs, which include a Bison meat processing facility, youth educational space, mobile food delivery, and elder firewood program, are run by local Pine Ridge Lakota people. Each program advances resiliency, self-sufficiency, and economic development.
Their elder firewood program is managed by approximately 6 tribal members, all dedicated to easing the burden of staying warm over the harsh winter months. South Dakota is known for it’s bitter cold winters, low temperatures average 15 degrees F over the winter months and storm events in 2023 dropped temperatures down to -18. The program leads are located in different towns across the reservation. Since the towns are spaced so far apart they each build a small firewood lot that they distribute to elders’ homes over the winter one pick up truck or trailer load at a time. I met Dale Pine from the town of Red Shirt, Guss Yellow Hair from the town of Allen, Bamm Brewer from the town of Pine Ridge, and Rick Greygrass from the town of Batesland.
All were committed to sca
ling One Spirit’s program impact in associated roles. Bamm, who also manages the Bison meat processing plant, has been determined to find, install, and maintain wood-burning stoves for elderly households that do not have a properly functioning stove. His neighbors know he is someone to call when they run out of wood during the heating months and when their everyday conversations reveal an elevated amount of smoke inside of their home, he offers to come over and identify the problems. He has sourced and installed wood stoves from Facebook marketplace and would love to see safe stove installations expand because some stoves are in dire need of attention.
Since the Black Hills are composed of lush prairies dissected by ponderosa pine filled gullies, there is tribal-owned forest and the Black Hills National Forest that surrounds the reservation. The best wood, and closest wood, available comes from private properties. Rick coordinates three generations of his family to harvest and process fallen trees that have met the end of their life on neighbors' creek banks. Many of the cottonwood windbreaks planted in the middle of the century are also reaching their lifespan; the trees are sporadically available and they harvest whenever and whatever they can. Wood is an ideal heating fuel for the people of Pine Ridge but sourcing wood in abundance is a difficult task.
The Oglala Lakota people source wood for the winter and also collect wood for seasonal sundances, a cultural gathering of community members centered around a bonfire that burns for multiple days on end. Before sourcing wood for firewood Rick was hired by the tribe to harvest teepee poles. Today Rick, Gus, Dale, and Bamm volunteer for One Spirit’s Elder Wood Program to distribute wood and lead small paid crews that assist in the processing and distribution of firewood. This year, with the Firewood Bank Assistance Program's small grants, they were able to purchase safety equipment for their small paid crews to protect themselves while operating splitters and chainsaws.
Dale, Bamm, Rick, and Gus believe an improved system to source firewood, sustain timber supply, and heat homes safely with locally sourced firewood is possible. Gus imagines a tribal forestry department replanting trees or windbreaks for future firewood down the road. They also think forestry management on tribal timbered lands would better serve wood-burning households where they could harvest locally and affordably.
The Black Hills National Forest offers tribal permits for fuelwood salvage often at no cost. They also sell timber permits to loggers out of Nebraska and South Dakota. One logger, Forrest Futtere, partners with the Oglala Lakota Cultural Economic Revitalization Initiative (OLCERI), a nonprofit firewood and sustainable living organization based on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Forrest has been providing truckloads of long logs to the OLCERI grounds where they are processed and sorted into liquid totes before they go back to tribal members to heat their homes.
Bryan Deans is the director of OLCERI, a Lakota tribal member, and a veteran of the U.S. Army. Through his past involvement with tribal government, he has created a robust program run by himself and Forrest. They fill roughly 200 liquid totes (some were purchased using their AGH Firewood Assistance Program small grant) with ½ cord of processed wood each and transport the filled liquid totes on a flatbed trailer to the towns when they need the heating fuel. Because he is rural, and at least a 30-minute drive from the closest reservation town, Bryan receives requests from the tribal government’s emergency management office to provide processed firewood to communities in the middle of winter. Once he gets the call where the wood needs to go, he and Forrest get it done.
In an effort to engage their community, Bryan will also host the public to help out with filling the liquid totes before the winter comes. Two of the totes fit in the back of his pickup truck and can be transported where they are needed in smaller loads. Although Bryan has developed a very good system for sourcing wood and delivering the fuel when needed he would like to grow his team to source wood more regularly and balance the workload for them both; he would also like to educate community members on becoming a logger as security for when Forrest hangs up his hat, and together they have plans to secure funding to purchase Forrest’s logger insurance and better timber permits from the Forest Service. OLCERI was started to improve the economic potential on the Pine Ridge Reservation, they are committed to the firewood
program and improving heat equity in addition to promoting safe and efficient homes.
Together these non-profits meet the needs of their most vulnerable community members. After heating assistance from the tribal government is exhausted, One Spirit and OLCERI’s firewood programs are the next place people turn for assistance. Their collaboration with tribal government and community shows how much they care about the long-term safety, heat security, and well-being of their friends, families, and neighbors. I can’t wait to revisit this community and hope for their continued success in both of their firewood programs.
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