Hemp Builds Houses, Economy, and Opportunity in Minnesota Tribal Community

Hoping to boost his tribe’s economy beyond gambling some 15 years ago, former Tribal Council member Earl Pendleton went searching for a project that could bring jobs and investment to benefit the entire Lower Sioux Indian Community.

Scrolling through YouTube videos, he saw people building homes with hempcrete, an insulation made from the woody inner core of the hemp plant. It seemed like a perfect match — a sustainable economic model rooted in the earth.

Native American farmers would grow hemp; the crop would be processed into hempcrete on the reservation. Native crews would build needed homes insulated with hempcrete.

“Earl always had this vision of having a full circular economy, a fully integrated business,” said Danny Desjarlais, who runs what’s now the Lower Sioux’s hempcrete business in rural southwestern Minnesota.

Pendleton’s vision took root in 2017 when the tribe signed on to a state pilot project to test-grow hemp, an opportunity made possible only after Congress legalized industrial hemp for research purposes in 2014.

In 2024, the tribe opened its hempcrete plant. The operation is now part of a quiet, national surge in Native-owned startups, although steep challenges remain to keep the business growing.

“We’re kind of biting off quite a bit here and trying to do it all,” Desjarlais said as he showed me around the operation recently. “We’ve scraped our knees a few times and we’re learning along the way as well.”

The odds don’t seem to faze him. He’s enthusiastic about the sustainability and health benefits that spring from using hempcrete in building homes and other structures on the reservation and elsewhere. He’s building a home for his family using hempcrete.

Passionate about getting the hempcrete word out and growing the business to benefit his neighbors living on the Lower Sioux Indian Community reservation, Dejarlais has also started a nonprofit called the Green Buffalo Institute.

“It’s basically geared to trying to educate others, especially tribal communities, about these materials and how to use it and why they should be using it,” he said. “Hopefully more people will have us out to do their workshops or have us out to do a building.”

Each house they work on helps prove the concept.

Read the full story from MPR News.

Photo credit: Chris Farrell, MPR News