Native Families Were Promised Free Solar. Trump Took It Away
It was sunny and warm for the end of November on the Rocky Boy’s Reservation in Northern Montana. Joseph Eagleman was standing on a grassy hill looking at a 20-panel solar array in the backyard of a Chippewa Cree elder.
It was built under the Solar for All program, a Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act-funded project that distributed $7 billion to build residential solar across the country. Here on Rocky Boy’s, around 200 homes would have received solar funded by the federal dollars.
This home was the first to get panels in Queensville, a small community of modest homes in one of the reservation’s valleys. The home is brown, two stories, and fully electric, which is one of the requirements to qualify for Solar for All funding. Eagleman met me there to give me a tour of the panels that all but eliminated the resident’s $200–300 monthly electricity bills, according to Eagleman.
Eagleman is the CEO of the Chippewa Cree Energy Corporation, an organization that manages energy development for the tribe. Here in the Northern Plains, a coalition of 14 tribes received a $135 million grant. The money would have provided around $7.6 million for each reservation to build residential solar, and Eagleman would have managed the Solar for All funds for the Chippewa Cree.
https://dailyyonder.com/federal-cuts-to-solar-for-all-program-impede-tribal-energy-sovereignty/2026/02/09/
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