Sacred Earth Solutions

We are abating the climate crisis by addressing energy insecurity in Indigenous communities that are simultaneously protecting fragile ecosystems. Indigenous communities are on the receiving end of massive extraction zones, environmental degradation, and climate change. We are on the frontline of impact so we need to be on the frontline of the solutions. 

Due to industrialization, Indigenous communities face the impact and burden of toxicity from being forced to live nearby extraction zones which are producing toxic air, contaminated water and fractured landscapes. Our Nations are living the consequences of what is unseen by many communities, especially in urban centres that do not live near extraction sites. Our peoples are facing cultural and environmental genocide on a critical scale through the loss of culture, language, and knowledge. While Indigenous communities lose access to their traditional territories due to colonial interests, industries polluting Indigenous lands and waters create unprecedented emissions and global impact. Our communities may be facing the brunt of extraction and climate change impacts but are not receiving the benefits of a just transition through the utilization of transition technologies to allow our communities to phase out of fossil fuels, coal, propane, and diesel. Indigenous communities are burdened by extraction, and Sacred Earth Solar works to find solutions to a just transition. 

The communities we partner with across Turtle Island are faced with the above impacts but are also concurrently rebuilding healing spaces in our communities, language revitalization, addressing the MMIWG2S+ epidemic, Indigenous art, ceremony, and ensuring intergenerational cultural transmission. Movements of occupation or immediate action to address systemic racism and colonial violence can be prolonged, traumatic and under-resourced. This often leaves communities unable to prioritize healing initiatives as well as accessing renewable energy implementation. 

Indigenous lands comprise around 20% of the Earth's territory yet containing 80% of the world's remaining biodiversity. Globally, Indigenous peoples have been forced to take direct action through frontline protection as the last resort when protecting their cultures, Indigenous knowledge and their relationships to their homelands. Indigenous people are intimately connected to the territories they come from with a sacred responsibility to protect Mother Earth. Due to the nature of land protection, we focus our solutions on providing resources through renewable energy and healing justice initiatives. By supporting frontline communities, we want to support more sustainable, healthy movements against environmental degradation and impacts. Our solutions are focused on the community scale but we are actively involved in climate policy development across the country to ensure Indigenous communities can access renewable energy in their respective jurisdictions. By protecting Indigenous peoples' territories, the work of Sacred Earth Solar benefits the climate by ensuring Indigenous energy sovereignty, land protection and governance on a global scale.

The time has come for communities to reintegrate the wisdom of our ancestors by implementing a just transition in Indigenous communities. Sacred Earth Solar (SES) is an Indigenous women-led organization that works with impacted Indigenous communities that are protecting their homelands by implementing solar energy and healing justice initiatives. We work towards a future where we no longer need to rely on fossil fuels, reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and inspire the world to join us in our call to create a healthy planet that sustains all generations to come.

Our solution is to provide renewable energy, climate adaptation solutions and to implement healing justice initiatives for Indigenous communities to combat environmental degradation and cultural genocide. Sacred Earth Solar implements solar projects in Indigenous communities using solar PV, solar thermal equipment, batteries, facilitates grid connection and implements healing justice through access to funds, tools and supplies. Providing access to a just transition and healing resources allows communities as a whole to sustain themselves when asserting jurisdiction of their territories.

By bringing capacity to communities through skills-sharing, fundraising and implementing these projects alongside our Indigenous community partners, we help communities be able to focus and maintain their movements toward land protection and cultural revitalization. Sacred Earth Solar is centred around uplifting the work of those working towards resurgence through the implementation of solar power and healing support which enables organizers to create sustainable action. While developing initiatives alongside communities, our work is community-centred with the guidance of elders and knowledge keepers while also making access to climate literacy and training for youth in their communities.

We also support community directed movements of land protection and cultural revitalization by providing clean electricity for necessities of charging electronics, lighting, food appliances, communication, and heating. Frontlines can be lonely, but through the implementation of solar and healing justice solutions, we hope to make their resistance more comfortable. 

Another integral solution we implement through Sacred Earth Solar is healing justice. Healing Justice is a framework that recognizes the impact of trauma and violence on individuals and communities. Sacred Earth Solar operates with Healing Justice as a foundation and works to increase awareness by providing tools to organizations and movements so the tenets of healing justice become foundational principles in how we organize. We currently provide Healing Justice honorariums, resources, and supplies to Indigenous communities taking environmental or cultural action who deserve the time and space for rest and recovery.

Below is a video link to one of our solutions for the Lubicon Cree Nation in Northern Alberta, currently facing tar sands impacts from Canada’s biggest industrial project: 

https://sacredearth.solar/piitapan

Our solutions at Sacred Earth Solar serve Indigenous communities on the frontlines of environmental and cultural genocide and our society as a whole as we work to lower greenhouse gas emissions to protect the planet from the impending climate and environmental impacts. Sacred Earth Solar does advocacy work in many environmental and climate arenas to ensure that there is robust climate policy being developed both locally, provincially and nationally. 

As well as providing communities with renewable energy solutions, we also implement healing justice solutions through honorariums and resources. Our healing justice initiatives that we are building at Sacred Earth Solar include providing collective care funds to Indigenous communities that support the accessibility of healing in communities which are often not easily accessible. Our founder has helped to increase awareness around the need for healing to be prioritized in Indigenous communities and also be made accessible to frontline communities that shoulder the burden of colonial violence to protect their homelands.

As the communities we work with are given support and resources, they can continue their protection. People taking on direct action against environmental and cultural genocide are working towards futures where their communities and the next generations. Indigenous communities work towards the betterment of Indigenous peoples and the greater society as a whole. 

We understand that the environmental degradation we face through extractive industries are the leading contributors to the climate crisis. As many Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities face the health impacts of environmental degradation, they are also facing the effects of climate change through floods, wildfires, erosion, and more. Frontline land defenders who actively resist extraction also impact the lives of the greater population globally outside of Indigenous peoples as their direct action actively lowers greenhouse gas emissions. In the Indigenous resistance against carbon, Oil Change International and Indigenous Environmental Network quantify the metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions that have been stopped or delayed in the past decade due to Indigenous direct action. The total of emissions Indigenous resistance has prevented or delayed greenhouse gas pollution is equivalent to at least one-quarter of annual U.S. and Canadian emissions.

Sacred Earth Solar directly serves Indigenous communities. By supporting the direct action of Indigenous people, we support Indigenous nations and communities across Turtle Island and all human and non-human kin globally through the resistance to greenhouse gas emissions.

We serve Indigenous communities across Canada and have worked with communities across the country from British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario. With the support of the MIT Indigenous Communities Fellowship, we hope to continue to expand our reach across other provinces and jurisdictions.

 We work with Indigenous communities from Wet’suwet’en territory (BC), Secwepemc territory (BC), Lubicon Cree territory  (AB), Ada’itsx territory (BC), and in Anishinaabe territory (ON) with the Onaman Collective. Sacred Earth Solar is currently collaborating on three more solar projects with The Tsleil-Waututh Nation (BC), the Cayuga Nation Sour Springs Longhouse (ON), and with No More Silence, an Indigenous-led MMIW organization based in Toronto (ON).

Our main priority is community benefit by fulfilling renewable energy needs and supporting the healing needs of the communities who invite us to work with them. We work with communities that are rebuilding sovereign, cultural spaces. We partner with communities looking to advance their clean energy solutions but need access to this knowledge, capacity and technology. We also partner with land defenders seeking additional healing and wellness support. Our projects benefit Indigenous communities that are revitalizing their languages, cultures, ceremonial spaces, and seed keeping system. 

Our community projects have a multitude of benefits, from increasing access to territory, access to ceremony and healing, communication needs, and powering kitchen appliances to make medicine and food. Our project, Piitapan, a 20.8kW renewable energy installation in Little Buffalo, powers the community health centre. We have seen the benefits of more green jobs and eliminating reliance on fossil fuels. Our organization also gives healing justice honorariums to land defenders and resources frontlines needs, such as a drone to assist in documenting old growth logging. 

The Tsleil-Waututh The Tsleil-Waututh Nation Sacred Trust initiative is mandated to stop the proposed Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) tanker and pipeline project. Sacred Earth Solar will support by providing a mobile solar hub to support an upcoming tour to sustain advocacy and communication to protect the Salish sea. 

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy, a traditional government based in Six Nations, is currently enforcing a moratorium on development on their territory. Through a partnership with Sacred Earth Solar, the Cayuga Nation wants to implement a solar PV project on the Sour Springs Longhouse covering their place of ceremony, cookhouse, study den, and seed shack for goals of energy sovereignty, food security, and lowering energy consumption and emissions. 

No More Silence is an MMIWG2S organization based in Toronto looking to solarize a healing space and sweat lodge for survivors of gender-based violence. Sacred Earth Solar will assist in the solarization of the two ceremonial lodges to provide a space for survivors to heal and reclaim culture.

Supporting communities to be energy sovereign and healthy allows for place-based climate and healing solutions that align with the laws and jurisdiction of each distinct Indigenous Nation.

Sacred Earth Solar staff are from Indigenous communities which means we understand the problems and therefore understand what solutions will work. By laying a strong foundation in building relationships of trust, we start every partnership by ensuring we do community engagement processes before we start any project. 

Our team is Indigenous women-led at Sacred Earth Solar. Each member of our team has experience on the frontlines of environmental degradation and protection in our communities. We firstly identify with our communities, and being members of those communities who work to protect our peoples from environmental impacts. As a team who all individually have first hand lived experiences of environmental impact and land protection in our respective homelands, we know intimately what communities are experiencing and can build authentic relationships and solutions with those we serve due to our own backgrounds and identities. 

Melina Laboucan-Massimo, a Lubicon Cree woman from the Alberta Tar Sands founded Sacred Earth Solar in 2015 after campaigning on social, environmental and climate issues for over 15 years. After witnessing first hand a massive oil spill in her community, Melina knew she needed to build climate solutions and a just transition in Indigenous communities that are impacted detrimentally by fossil fuels. Beginning as a master’s thesis, she led the implementation of a 20.8-kilowatt solar system that powers the health center in the heart of the tar sands where her community of Little Buffalo is located. Due to the lived experience and deep understanding, our founder Melina holds, she is committed to creating community-centered solutions that we believe our team at Sacred Earth Solar can deliver.

Our organization is applying to SOLVE to increase the impact of Sacred Earth Solar with the support of MIT. Sacred Earth Solar is built upon Indigenous-led climate solutions and we would like to bring our solutions to the forefront through community-building, mentorship, robust climate policy, funding, and opportunities. We yearn to be connected to a wider international community also driving innovation. We believe our solutions are innovative, community-based, and by and for Indigenous communities across Turtle Island. 

We currently only operate north of the medicine line in so-called Canada, and have wishes to eventually expand outside of the north and in the United States, Central America, and South America. We want to build relationships, and build solutions with communities, not being restrained by colonial borders. 

Our current funding is on a project by project basis, but through the MIT Indigenous Communities Fellowship, we believe this network and platform will be able to support our organization in building a more foundational platform for financial sustainability in order to support Indigenous communities on a rolling basis going forward, and hopefully to a global scale. With an increased funding base, we will be able to support and implement renewable energy projects in a wider range of communities across the world.

Melina is Lubicon Cree from Little Buffalo in Northern Alberta. Through her upbringing, she is intimately connected to many communities in Northern Alberta through tar sands impacts. Due to Melina’s extensive experience focusing on land protection, environmental impacts, and climate solutions, she has made a multitude of relationships with Indigenous communities and land protectors across the Americas and internationally. Melina has stood in solidarity with nations, tribes, and communities all over the world, and in that solidarity has built a network of kinship across the globe supporting Indigenous land protection, climate and healing justice solutions. 

Melina and Sacred Earth Solar are connected to the communities we work with through relationships and invitations. Through national and international advocacy, Melina has become a credible, community centred leader in building Indigenous led climate solutions. Reciprocal long-term relationships are central to our work.