When Earl Pendleton first heard about building houses out of hemp more than a decade ago, it seemed like a far-fetched idea.
To start, it was still illegal to grow hemp – the non-psychoactive strain of Cannabis sativa – in the US. Importing it from overseas was prohibitively expensive. But Pendleton, a member of the Lower Sioux Indian Community, was intrigued by early research that showed hemp could be transformed into non-toxic construction materials that allow for faster build times and result in low-carbon, energy-efficient houses.
Which was exactly what he saw his tribe needed at the time. Roughly half of the tribal nation’s enrolled members – about 1,120 people – are currently in need of housing. With his encouragement, the community started experimenting with hemp as a housing construction material – also known as hempcrete – back in 2016, even before it was decriminalized in the US. This month, the tribal nation is set to open the first vertically integrated hempcrete facility in the nation, complete with its own growing operation.
When the Lower Sioux’s 20,000-sq-ft, $6.2m onsite facility opens in April, the tribal nation will become a leader in the growing green building movement.
But the decision to invest in hemp was first born out of the Lower Sioux’s commitment to sovereignty and self-determination. “The whole idea was just to be able to service our own needs, because we’re short at least 150 houses [on the reservation],” said Pendleton.
He was impressed with how hemp-based building materials resulted in mold-, pest-, and fire-resistant houses. Additionally, it helps regulate temperatures, keeping homes cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.
“If we could cut down on our members’ energy costs, we had to try it,” said Pendleton.
With eco-friendly properties such as improved carbon dioxide sequestration, hempcrete has gained traction as the construction industry looks to lessen its environmental impact. Since its development in the 1980s, hempcrete has become increasingly popular in Europe, where it is often used to renovate older stone or lime buildings. But producing the material wasn’t legalized in the US until the 2018 farm bill removed hemp from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) controlled substances schedule.
Although the concept of creating affordable, environmentally responsible homes – and in turn, jobs – for the Lower Sioux seemed like a no-brainer, getting things off the ground was quite the undertaking. The tribal nation first needed to develop an agricultural program, invest in equipment and set up a basic processing facility without many strong models out there to emulate.
In 2016, tribal members planted 20 acres of hemp as a test run and have since expanded to 100 acres. “We don’t have that much tillable land here at Lower Sioux,” said Pendleton. “And you can’t plant hemp year after year, so it has to be put into rotation with corn and soybeans. But we can process up to 2,500 acres of hemp with our equipment, so there’s the possibility of contracting with area farmers to expand the program.”
Agriculture might be a new venture for the Lower Sioux, but construction is in the community’s wheelhouse. That’s where Danny Desjarlais, a carpenter by training, comes in. In 2022, Pendleton convinced him to become project manager of the hempcrete initiative instead of pursuing a career shift into long-haul trucking.
Desjarlais is now part of a six-person construction crew (all paid tribal members) that has built three hempcrete houses in the span of seven months, with more in the works. These construction projects have been supported by community and grant funding. The homes will soon host their first residents, as determined by tribal leaders based on need.
Despite initial skepticism, community members are starting to recognize the program’s potential.
“Just the word ‘hemp’ has a stigma surrounding it,” said Desjarlais. “Some of the elders didn’t like that we were even growing hemp before we started building with it. Earl had an uphill battle to get the program going, but once we had a building that people could walk through to see the end product, the community really rallied around it.”
“There were a lot of people who didn’t believe we could do it,” said Pendleton. “But soon, we’ll have first-hand accounts from people who are living in these structures that will help the rest of the community really see the benefit.”
The Lower Sioux is limited in land to build new housing, but the tribal nation recently acquired 200 acres of nearby state and private land to help address that. That area still requires infrastructure development such as roads, sewers, water and electrical hookups, but it presents an opportunity to put the hempcrete construction initiative to the test, with about 60 houses slated to be built there. There’s also talk of incorporating a school and other amenities. By keeping much of that construction work in house rather than outsourcing it to contractors, the community stands to save considerable money.
“All these years, I thought the issue was going to be keeping costs down assuming that hemp was going to be 20% to 30% more expensive than conventional materials,” Pendleton said. “But Danny and his crew built the emergency shelter and the duplex for 20% less than what conventional would have cost. It’s amazing that they pulled that off.”
The Minnesota lieutenant governor, Peggy Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, who is currently the highest-ranking Native American woman elected to executive office in the US, recently visited the reservation’s newly constructed hempcrete buildings alongside Tim Walz, the governor, and called the tribal community’s efforts “powerful to witness”.
“This program is a great example of a housing project that was driven by the community,” said Flanagan, “and one that can inspire the state as we continue to invest in housing preservation, creation, affordability and sustainability.”
If the construction crew is able to start manufacturing prefabricated wall panels and blocks, the building timeline would shorten considerably and allow for year-round productivity. The tribal nation could also eventually sell those materials to outside customers, said Pendleton, and perhaps even provide construction services off the reservation.
To that end, he sees a future where the hempcrete program – which he calls “seed-to-sovereignty” – drives meaningful revenue for the Lower Sioux community to supplant casino dollars, which have been the tribal nation’s main income source for the past 35 years. And there’s even more money to be made by selling off the unused portions of the hemp plant, such as the grain and fiber, because hempcrete only utilizes the hurd, the inner-core fiber of the stalk that’s actually considered waste.
“There are 20,000 products you can make from hemp; this is just one of them,” Pendleton said. Long term, the tribe aims to expand processing capacity, which would probably create more jobs for tribal members while also making this climate-smart building material more readily available in the US. The positive impacts could reach far beyond the Minnesota reservation – and far beyond today’s generation.
“As the historical caretakers of the environment, Native communities should be leading the change in how the world is built,” said Pendleton. “We’re trying to prevent our world from hurtling toward that 2.5C mark and offering the younger generation something more sustainable so they can live better lives decades from now. Hemp is part of that solution, and we’re building a blueprint for other Native communities to follow.”
First, however, the Lower Sioux community is focused on addressing its own housing needs. “At the end of the day, we’re putting a roof over our people’s heads and giving them healthier homes,” said Desjarlais. “That’s a win-win, no matter where we go from here.”